


The wrath of love

by Excuseyouclarke



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Ancient Greece, Angst, Arcadia - Freeform, Arranged Marriage, Betrayal, F/M, Graphic Violence, Jealousy, Queen Clarke, Smut, Sparta - Freeform, Traitors Everywhere, Warrior Bellamy, a badly written battle, graphic descriptions of death, hate to lust to love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-12 14:15:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 36,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28761654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Excuseyouclarke/pseuds/Excuseyouclarke
Summary: As a newly appointed General, Bellamy never expected his life to be easy. As Sparta was recovering from the revolts, his biggest challenge was rebuilding their army. He never expected to be thrown into a marriage with the enemy as a political pawn, it was never in his job description to be a spy.When her father died, Clarke thought it ambitious to become the Queen of Arcadia. But in her success, there are enemies around every corner, waiting to bring to her down. Especially those closest to her.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 23
Kudos: 120
Collections: The t100 Writers for BLM Initiative





	The wrath of love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheatreSteph](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheatreSteph/gifts).



The sun reaches its highest point and beats down relentlessly on the training grounds when Murphy tells him he’s been  _ summoned _ to Pike’s Chambers. 

There’s no telling what this could be about, but to be sent to his chambers during a training session and not the throne room seems ominous. He drops his sword back to the arsenal and makes his way through the stone halls. It’s cooler here, a small respite from the summer heat outside. 

The guards eye him suspiciously but don’t question why he’s there, just step aside to open the doors for him. Being there isn’t unusual, and there are enough rumours of war looming that the General coming to the King’s chambers is not unheard of. 

The guards aren’t scared of war though, they simply want something to talk about.

Pike stands on the balcony, looking over the training grounds. Bellamy hadn’t even noticed him when he’d been down there. He turns at Bellamy’s entrance and smiles widely. He’s been under Pikes rule long enough to know that his smiles don’t mean a thing. He’s seen him smile going into battle, and just before he’s cut a traitor's head off. 

He doesn’t think he’s done anything to warrant having his head cut off, but he never really knows with Pike. 

“Bellamy.” Pike walks over to where he stands. Even Pike’s chambers aren’t a friendly place, battle plans lay strewn over every surface, and he wonders if Pike dreams about battle—no, he knows he does. Pike pours a cup of wine and passes it to Bellamy, then pours one for himself. “How’s the training going?”

“Good.” Bellamy nods, taking a reluctant sip. While he enjoys wine, the ones Pike drinks are much too rich, too expensive for his taste. Pike will only drink one type of wine, much too paranoid to tolerate a change in taste. It’s an ambitious wish, to poison Pike. Bellamy can only imagine the amount of people who think of doing it, but not many would try. 

Bellamy had taken over as General after the Hysiai and Messian revolts. The old General died in battle and Bellamy had stepped up, taking a step up in the ranks and reaping the benefits of his hard work. As a result, he’s become Pike’s confidant, he knows more than he wishes to, but it’s a part of his role now.

“We have some promising young soldiers.” Bellamy starts. Promising young soldiers were their only saving grace right now, after their crushing defeat during the revolts, their army isn’t as strong as it used to be. As long as Pike wasn’t planning wars anytime soon they’d be fine.

Unfortunately, he knows Pike, and he knows that he is always planning something.

“Some not as promising but then, neither was Murphy when he started out,” Bellamy finishes with a mutter.

Pike laughs in agreement. “Murphy has his uses, even if he’s not a great soldier.”

Murphy’s a worm—plain and simple. Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing, just not what he imagines honour is. 

“I thought I would tell you first, before the whispers begin,” Pike tells him bluntly, taking a sip of his wine. “Arcadia’s king died rather...unexpectedly this morning”

Bellamy blinks in surprise, that wasn’t on the list of things he had expected to hear. He wants to say that it’s unfortunate, but the death of a political rival never really is. 

The tension with Arcadia had been growing more and more recently. What used to be a solid relationship had become fragile. Now, they were on the verge of war. A new leader would make or break the future of Arcadia and Sparta’s relationship. 

So instead of expressing sympathy he doesn't hold, he asks strategically, “What’s next?”

The response seems to please Pike—he’s learning. “Arcadia is voting tonight, but from what I’ve been hearing, the King's daughter is the favourite.”

Bellamy frowns, “Is Arcadia running under a Monarchy now?”

“No, but Arcadians are creatures of habit. They like what they know, so the princess taking over would be their most reasonable move. Not a good one, perhaps—but for them, it would make sense.”

Pike pauses, looking back out to the balcony. It overlooks the vast lands of Sparta—his land. Bellamy sees it in his eyes, the passion and possessiveness he has for it. 

“Clarke going into power would not be favourable for us. From what I’ve heard, she’s power-hungry—as are her people. Until now the previous King has kept some sort of control— _ she  _ won’t.”

He thinks of the destruction a leader like that could cause. Arcadia’s army has nothing on theirs, either—so war would be a very bad move for them, but a good training session for Sparta. Zeus only knows the new soldiers could use a good challenge.

So let Arcadia have their war, Pike could easily say the word and take siege of the city and have all of this over and done with.

“Do you think Arcadia would vote her in?” Bellamy questions. He doesn’t know much about Arcadia, only what he has to. He knows that they’re progressive with their ideas, he knows that they enjoy their freedoms and comforts. Would they want someone who was power-hungry like her in control?

“Do not underestimate the princess, she holds a great power over Arcadia, and as the daughter of the last King—she holds quite an influence.”

It must be some influence for them to make a move to actively want to go to war, but he can’t pretend to know that much about their way of life.

“I have a problem, General.” Pike’s onto calling him General, which means it’s getting serious—this is business. “Arcadia doesn't just want a war—they want to take our land, to take over my reign, and to disband our army. They don’t just see our army as a threat, they see an army like ours dishonourable. They say they don’t want mothers to send their sons to war—they see no honour in a warrior's death.”

Bellamy doesn’t understand it, why would you not want honour? Was it not the greatest achievement to see your child fight for their land—to die in war was to die with honour. It’s what they were born for, what they were raised to do. Sparta would be nothing without its warriors.

What would he do if not fight? He would never be a great scholar or diplomat, and he holds no interest in the arts. He’s right where he is supposed to be. That’s what his mother had always taught him—that life would lead him exactly where he was supposed to be.

“Sire.” he frowns, not really understanding what this has to do with him.

“You’re coming to an age, Bellamy. An age where an unmarried man is greatly mocked.”

It’s true. If it were up to him he would have been married a while ago, but that wasn’t to be. Gina died in a tragic accident, one that shattered his heart and put up a wall around his feelings.

He is a warrior—warriors don’t need to feel.

“I fear I may be asking a lot of you,” Pike continues, much to Bellamy’s confusion. He’s the General—he does his job, he trains the new warriors, helps with battle plans, and where needed he’s Pikes confidant. He doesn’t do anything past what the role requires of him. “If Clarke is elected, I’m going to offer a peace treaty—an olive branch, so to speak.”

This throws him off more, this isn’t in Pike’s character. He wouldn’t give in to Arcadia, nor would he offer a peace treaty to somebody willing to start a war with them. Sparta does not give in.

“If Clarke becomes their Queen, I need you to marry her,” Pike says it slowly, concisely. There's no room for error, no room for misinterpretation. He wants Bellamy to marry the Queen, Arcadia’s  _ Queen. _

“I’m sorry.” Bellamy blinks in confusion. “I’m afraid I don’t understand, you want to offer my hand in marriage as a peace treaty?”

Pike's smile is cold and calculated. Somewhere in the pit of his stomach, he knows this is not an average treaty.

***

Clarke stands on her balcony overlooking Arcadia—her land, her city. Her people chose her, it still doesn’t feel real.

Below her, Arcadia is loud and lively, markets bring people to the centre, and merry bartering echoes across the marble and stone. It’s beyond an honour to be Queen, the love she has for the city and its people runs deep, ingrained in her. She would do anything for them.

On the streets underneath her, a boy no older than five hands a girl his own age a bunch of flowers he must have picked from the hills. She laughs when the girl scrunches up her nose and runs away. The boys left confused and red-faced, and Clarke thinks  _ Oh to be young and feel love's bitter sting. _

_ Love,  _ she curses the very word. She doesn’t need it, nor does she want it. She has already achieved more in her short lifetime than most men had in old age.  _ If  _ they made it to old age, that is.

That’s where her General, Kane finds her, leaning over her Balcony watching the day go by—as if she had nothing better to do. She turns to greet him, a tight smile on her lips.

Kane has this habit of rarely bringing her good news. Even before being appointed, he was always the bearer of bad news. He was the one who came to the temple to announce her father’s passing – cold and unfeeling—as if it were no more than a fly he had just squashed. He didn’t care that the news of the king's passing—her  _ father’s  _ passing would have a detrimental effect on Arcadia, he stood blank and unfeeling as she’d dropped to her knees and sobbed.

“I bring news,” he announces in lieu of a proper greeting. She wonders who taught him manners as a child—she’s almost confident Vera couldn’t raise a child as rude as him.

“Don’t you always?” She gestures to the small table in her chambers and sits opposite him. He’s uncomfortable as he sits, back too straight and an expression like she’s stuck a spear in his neck. 

Surely she’s not so awful.

“I’m afraid so,” he agrees tightly. Clarke pours two cups of wine—Arcas knows she needs it. “I’ll cut to the chase, I appreciate you’re settling into your role”

Clarke hums in agreement, taking a sip of wine and watching him carefully. He shifts uncomfortably again. She has a feeling he’s going to waste a perfectly good cup of wine.

“What is it then?” She sighs, wondering what could have possibly gone wrong in a few hours. Had the council already tried to overthrow her?

“Sparta wants to strike a peace treaty.”

Clarke blinks in surprise, that is unexpected, to say the least. Their relationship with Sparta is fraught, and that’s putting it lightly. They were on the brink of war, and Sparta needed very little excuse to go to war, especially when they know Arcadia’s army was not as powerful as theirs. Despite their recent defeat and a weakened army, they’re still much more powerful than her army. Ideally, she wouldn’t need an army, and neither would any other nation. But there is nothing ideal about the world they live in, and alas they do need an army—the nations’ leaders would rather a war over peace most times.

Which is why a peace treaty would be an excellent opportunity for them. Having Sparta as an ally would reap rewards she can only imagine. It’s been a long time since Arcadia and Sparta were on good terms, and if she could do that at the start of her ruling, it would secure her place with the council, and cancel out the doubt and the whispers that are already circulating about her being an unfit leader.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she thinks that maybe it’s too easy, they’ve offered too much too soon and she should heed caution, but then—she can’t afford to turn it down. It would be an act of war, but maybe that’s what they’re anticipating. 

“I would be more than happy to accept a peace treaty with them. I’m sure we can work out a deal that benefits both cities.” That wasn’t difficult, so why did Kane still look like he’s pulling teeth? “What’s the catch?” She sighs reluctantly. She would be a fool to think that Sparta would just offer up a peace treaty without getting anything in return.

“No catch,” Kane replies stiffly—he’s a terrible liar. “Sparta requests that we seal the alliance with a marriage, though.” He says it so flippantly—as if a marriage is no great fate. 

Clarke’s heart sinks.  _ Marriage.  _ She’s been there before—betrothed to a man twice her age, promised to him before she was even born. The marriage didn’t last long before his  _ tragic accident. _

She never would have made a good housewife. 

“If you think I’m going to marry Pike–”

“Not Pike,” Kane assures her quickly, panic flashing in his eyes. Clarke’s reputation for being badly tempered precedes her. “His General, Bellamy.”

“Okay.” Clarke nods slowly. It was better than Pike—it had to be—but she still knew nothing about the man she’s about to be betrothed to. “What’s Bellamy like?”

“Does it matter?” Kane asks bluntly, and she supposes he’s right, though she’s not sure the alliance would survive a tragic accident like her last husband’s. That doesn’t mean she  _ won’t  _ do it, though. She hopes Sparta knows that she'd hate for a war to start because they sent her a terrible husband.

“I suppose not.” She shrugs, but she can’t help but wonder what exactly is wrong with the General if he was being sent to Arcadia to marry her. “Do you trust them? Sparta?”

Kane doesn’t look at her, of course, he can’t—he’s selling her off like cattle. “I don’t know,” he confesses finally, quietly. “But I think an alliance with them is too good of an offer to pass up. I fear what would happen if you were to reject the proposal and the treaty.”

He’s right—whether they’re planning to send the General as a spy or if it’s a genuine peace offer—it’s too good to pass up. Even the illusion of peace would be acceptable right now, Athena only knows that she needs a strong start to her leadership. The council was not going to make this easy.

What the council will think of her taking a Spartan husband she doesn’t know—but if Kane’s here and willing for her to do it, she assumes it will be fine.

No, she doesn’t  _ assume  _ it will be fine, she knows it will because she’ll tell them that this will be fine. She’s the leader, the Queen of Arcadia, she will not let her life be dictated by trying to please others. Especially not the council that looked so shocked when they announced her as the Queen.

If she wants to take a Spartan husband for a peace treaty, then she will. Whether she trusts Sparta or not, right now it’s a smart move.

“It’s the right move.” She sighs, and Kane looks hopeful. “I’ll accept, only after the peace treaty is finalised. I won’t accept a bad deal for the sake of a husband.”

Kane visibly relaxes. She didn’t know her decision was weighing that heavily on him. “I think that’s a good choice.” He gives her a tight smile she cannot bring herself to return. “I’ll set up a meeting with Pike, of course, you don’t have to be a part of it if you don’t want to. As General, I can more than handle it, and the council members–”

“ _ I  _ will be drawing up the treaty with Sparta,” she tells him as evenly as possible, though it’s a struggle to keep her temper at bay. Here it is, here is where it starts. She’s a  _ woman— _ she can’t make the right decisions, she’s too irrational and impulsive, she has a bad temper and a worse reputation. Though her role as princess was respected, she must earn her respect as a leader, as her father did before her.

“Very well.” Kane nods reluctantly. “I’ll set up the meeting as soon as possible.”

“Do,” she tells him shortly. He stands and nods to her, then the door shuts behind him with a rattle. He’s left most of the wine—nobody would know if she drank it.

*

Pike wastes no time, much to her relief. He arrives with a small entourage just two days later. She meets him outside of Lycosura, the temple's grand and she’d be lying if she were to say she wasn’t showing off a little.

Pike greets her with a bow and a kiss to her knuckles—it makes her skin crawl.

“Your majesty,” he greets, “Congratulations are in order.”

“Thank you.” She smiles tightly. She hopes he doesn’t notice how much of an effort it is to be around him. “I would have made more of an effort for your arrival, but I thought I’d save that for the wedding.”

She watches for Pikes reaction carefully, she’s not stupid—she knows Spartans marry for love, not for political alliances. Perhaps they’re hoping she’ll contrive feelings for her new husband, that their children will grow up with a knowledge of both worlds—a new generation in a brand new world, a world where they only know peace, no war or violence.

Perhaps her new husband will be a spy. Maybe they’ll feed Pike information of Arcadia’s movements, of their decisions and assemblies. It sits heavy on her, that she could be opening them up for a trap, strapping a target to their back. Perhaps he’ll slit her throat in her sleep, the possibilities really are endless.

She really doesn’t know what to do for the best, so all she can do is trust her instincts, and make the smart move.

They make their way to the parliament, her treaty terms already laid out for Pike. She’s surprised at how accommodating he is, how easily he accepts her terms and how simple his terms are. There’s very little negotiation and it does very little to quell her suspicions.

Pike assures her that they just want peace as soon as possible. He makes her skin crawl. 

“My people are starting to rebel against our ways,” he quietly confesses with a sigh. “They have seen how you live, what freedoms you have and your ideals. I fear the time has finally come to start changing Sparta’s ways.”

She doesn’t believe a word of it. Well, that's not entirely true. She believes that Sparta may be rebelling against their ways, against the senseless bloodshed and violence, sending their sons off to a needless war, breeding just to replenish their army. It’s barbaric.

She doesn’t believe Pike will change Sparta, not for what Arcadia has. She’s more and more convinced that this a ruse, a red herring.

Two can play that game.

*

She hadn’t seen her mother since her father’s death. Now she stands behind Clarke taking the braids from her hair in silence. Her hair falls down her shoulders in waves—the braids did their job, now it’s time to do hers.

Her dress is laid out on her bed, white with gold detailing, more intricate and expensive than her last wedding dress but then she wasn’t Queen yet—she wasn’t securing a peace treaty then. She has to impress, not just Sparta, but her people. She still feels the need to prove herself, somehow being made Queen isn’t enough for her.

So now she’s marrying a complete stranger, knowing exactly two things about him—his name is Bellamy, and he’s a General in Sparta.  _ Was  _ a General in Sparta, his new home is here with her. She wonders how he feels about that. Did he agree to it easily, or like herself was he coerced into it? Does he have any say over his leader? She doubts it.

Her mother sighs behind her, pulling the front strands of her hair back to make small, intricate braids lined with gold. The strands aren’t far from her natural hair colour—it makes it look like her hair’s glimmering in the sun.

A shimmering oil is spread over her arms and chest once she’s in her dress, a fine gold powder spreads over her eyelids and somebody declares her ready. Her mother clasps her chin and turns her head side to side, then gives her one last appraising look.

“Beautiful,” she tells her with no real emotion in her voice. Clarke doesn’t blame her, it’s been a rocky couple of weeks. Clarke manages a tight smile and a nod. “Are you sure you want to do this?” She sounds unsure this time—Clarke had wondered if her mother had any idea what was going on.

“I’m sure,” Clarke assures her. “For Arcadia.”

“So much like your father.” Her mother sighs and floats away, to wherever she hides out these days. She’s not privy to that information—Queen or not. It leaves Clarke alone with her thoughts, with every bad scenario running through her mind. She feels sick, and dizzy—definitely dizzy. She takes a few deep, steadying breaths and waits for her time to come.

She hears her chariot before it’s announced. Nerves still bundle in her stomach, worse than before. This is real, she’s doing this. She has to do it.

There are a million ways this could go wrong, and only a few ways it could go right.

If it doesn’t end with too much potent wine and a high window on their wedding night, it may be a success. She wonders if her new husband is aware of that, or if they’ve left him in the dark.

She doesn’t know which option is more desirable.

Nerves are beginning to cloud her vision—somebody places a heavy gold crown on her head and announces it’s time to go as the sun blazes on in the sky.

No turning back now.

***

Wedding ceremonies are different in Arcadia.

Bellamy doesn’t understand why he has to be in his best ceremonial wear. Back home, he’d have a friendly duel with his new wife, throw her over his shoulder and they’d have a feast and get drunk before beginning the rest of their lives together,

That’s how it’s supposed to be.

He was never supposed to be standing here, in a foreign city marrying someone he’d never met before—he was never supposed to be a political pawn in Pikes games, but then, who really chooses their own path? Certainly not him.

Now he stands in unfamiliarity, the aisle adorned with mountain flowers and threads of gold. He doesn’t even know what his new wife looks like—he only knows what Pike has told him, which isn’t exactly a glowing recommendation.

He’s barely aware of his mother and sister sitting close by, no doubt his sister will be scowling and his mother will be watching critically. She had not agreed with the plan when he’d told her, but then, she couldn’t disagree with it either. So left at an impasse, all she could do was support him the best she could.

Pike’s here somewhere too, watching with well-disguised glee as his plan falls into place. All that’s left is for Bellamy to not mess it up.

He won’t mess it up—Sparta is depending on him.

Music starts up, soft and distant, then he hears the chariot that carries his new wife. Of course, Pike had explained what was going to happen, but listening to Pike talk about it and living it are different entities altogether.

Nerves swim in his stomach now, the proceedings getting closer.

For a city that claims to be so free, they did things so formally and serious. He can tell that the people of Arcadia look down on him, he knows what they think of him.

They think of Sparta as some barbaric land that thrives on violence and killing.

Arcadia has an army too—they start wars and kill just like Sparta do. What makes them so different? What gives them the right to look down their noses when they all live on false pretences of freedom?

This may be a tough few months.

The chariots finally arrived and girls in white tunics scatter petals on the aisle. There’s a hum of excitement from the crowd, but he can’t concentrate on that, not when there’s a figure stepping out of the chariot. Her face is covered by thick cloth veil, but he’s sure soon enough that will be gone. Still, the anticipation is killing him, to finally see the mighty  _ Queen  _ of Arcadia, to see what makes her so special.

The veil is removed before she gets to him and he’ll admit she’s more beautiful than he ever imagined, there’s no denying that much. Her hair and skin are lighter than any person he’s seen before, she doesn’t look like she’s from this world with her crown of gold and blue eyes lighting up in the midday sun. She smiles tightly at him. She’s young, perhaps just a bit younger than him, and briefly, he thinks of what a shame it is that so much responsibility falls to the shoulders of one so young.

Then he reminds himself that she signed up for this—Arcadia signed up for this. He reminds himself of what Pike told him, that she’s power-hungry and bad-tempered, getting on the wrong side of her could be detrimental.

The vows are short, promises that he does not intend to keep are made, and like that, he’s married in the worst way he could possibly imagine, as a political ruse to start a war.

His mother is the first to find him, hugging him tightly and telling him to promise that he’ll come find her at the first signs of trouble, she’ll do whatever she must to help him. It’s reassuring to say the least. Despite her pout earlier, Octavia at least looks pleased as she throws her arms around him and tells him that she’ll miss him.

That’s what hits him the hardest. Their fathers died in battle when both of them were young. He practically raised Octavia—there were times he felt more like a parent than a sibling, but that it’s okay because he loves her.

Both straighten and bow when Clarke approaches, but she waves the formalities off.

“No need for all of that.” Clarke smiles while his mother’s expression is guarded, suspicious of the tyrant Queen now married to her son. “Not between family.”

His mother responds with no more than a nod and Clarke looks somewhat at a loss. He imagines she’s always been pandered to, her charming words and smiles always met with adoration, not animosity.

“I’m sorry,” Clarke continues, “I know this probably isn’t what you had planned for your only son, I understand this is not the Sparta way but I appreciate the sacrifice you’ve all made.”

This takes his mother somewhat by surprise, but as always, she recovers well and thanks Clarke for her kind words, though it sounds insincere—Clarke either doesn’t notice or chooses not to.

“Is your mother here? I’d love to meet her.'' Clarke's momentarily thrown by his mother’s question—her face freezes and her jaw tenses.

“I’m afraid not,” Clarke finally answers through a tense smile. “She couldn’t make it tonight.”

“She couldn’t make her own daughter's wedding? The _ Queen's wedding _ at that.”

“She’s not well,” Clarke says carefully, measured. “The shock of my father dying and everything that happened after that, I’m afraid it’s all just a bit much for her.”

There's more to it than that, Bellamy can tell. But he won’t pry—not yet. He’ll bide his time for now, there’s plenty of time for finding out secrets.

Then they’re moved back to the centre. Even sitting next to each other in the chariot they don’t say a word. It’s strange, and certainly not how he imagined getting married would be—so hostile and impersonal, but then this isn’t a marriage out of love like he had expected he would have—this was a business deal.

Clarke seems unsure of herself as she sits next to him, hands balled up in her lap and staring straight ahead. She’s been Queen for just a few days and now she’s thrown into a marriage under a false pretence of peace. 

If he were willing, he’d have sympathy for what’s coming her way, but he holds very little of that for her. She’s young and naive, and she holds much too much power for her own good. She wants to change too much of their world for nothing more than her own satisfaction. Soon enough she’ll come to realise that it doesn’t work like that. She can’t try and overthrow Sparta because she doesn’t like their power. 

The celebrations are much more extravagant than he thought they would be. This is after all a marriage of convenience for Arcadia, not one of love. Coming so soon after their beloved king's death, he expected them to still be in mourning. It would appear not though, they’re more than happy to throw lavish parties for their tyrant Queen. He supposes they’ve got a lot to celebrate though, a new Queen—a newly married Queen at that—and a peace deal with Sparta.

The chariot stops outside the main square, where they’re met with a cheer. Clarke instantly changes—she’s happy in front of her people, a different person completely to who was sitting next to him just a moment ago.

Her people obviously adore her, he can’t help but wonder if it’s a familiar kind of love—she was their princess for so long, do they truly know what kind of a person she is? Or perhaps that's why they adore her, they think she’ll bring them greatness through a war they’ll never win.

He’ll give Arcadia credit where credit is due—they throw a damn good party. There’s a feast and more wine than he ever imagined. The atmosphere is good, people are merry and mingling, there’s dancing and entertainment. It may all be for show—proving a point to Sparta about how good their life is here, how free and happy they are. 

He feels vaguely guilty, seeing how happy people seem to be at the peace deal. He knows it won’t last, but then does he really care? These people were voting to go to war with Sparta, they want the blood and violence they look down on his people for. The feeling of guilt quickly fades.

He catches Pike, standing in the shadows watching Clarke and her council closely. Bellamy follows suit, only more obvious. He can be, he’s supposed to be one of them now, he needs to get involved—and if he just happens to overhear information that can help him, well so be it.

He thought with the wine flowing that people’s lips would be a little looser, but all he hears is idle gossip. While he’s not expecting to hear battle plans, he hopes to hear something more interesting. Still, it’s a party, and there’s plenty of time to find out more information.

He does overhear a conversation that piques his interest. Clarke’s mother, Abby, isn’t ‘unwell’—she disagrees with Clarke becoming Queen, and she’s started rumours that Clarke had something to do with the king's death. Bellamy doesn’t know enough about either woman to say if it is true. But for Abby not to come to her daughter's wedding, he knows something isn’t right there. Maybe Abby would be useful.

There are other whispers too, about the General not being Clarke’s biggest fan. He stores the information away, saying nothing, but hearing everything.

Pike finds him hours later when there’s nothing interesting to hear anymore, so he makes his rounds introducing himself. Everybody seems friendly enough, even if the council is still guarded. It’s fine though, he’s got enough time to make himself friendly. Pike seems to sneak up on him though—he’s good at doing that.

“Find out anything interesting?” he murmurs, bringing his cup to his lips, but not drinking the wine in it. Whether that’s because it’s not to his taste or because he thinks he’ll be poisoned, he doesn’t know. He suspects the latter though.

“Nothing more than idle gossip,” Bellamy reiterates, “Clarke’s mother hasn’t taken the king's death very well, she suspects Clarke had something to do with it.”

Pike nods, averting his gaze around the room again. “I suspect she may be right.”

There’s a cold feeling in Bellamy’s chest, it’s a feeling of dread and doom. Before he’d set off for Arcadia, Murphy had told him about some of the rumours he’d heard in his time—that Clarke had murdered her first husband on their wedding night, long before becoming Queen. That she’s using her power to root for war and to disband Sparta’s army. That’s why he’s here though, to find out what was really going on.

“I also heard the General isn’t too fond of her, either.”

Pike grunts in response, eyes travelling around the room until they fall onto Kane. He’s tall and serious, always severe-looking, and always watching Clarke’s movements closely.

“I have one specific request for you.” Pike’s not looking at him, and Bellamy can hardly hear him over the sound of the party. “Infiltrate the army. I want to know everything—their movements, their plans, their training strategies. Do whatever you can to get that information, use your position as a General and the Queen's husband to find out every last shred of information.”

No pressure then. “How will I get the information back to you? Sparta is half a days journey at best by horse, I’d be spending more time telling you what I’ve found than finding it out.”

“Don’t worry about that, you’ll know your cue. It’s imperative that you stay in Arcadia, I’ll send someone to you.”

Bellamy nods, he’s not quite sure how it works, but he trusts Pike. He trusts that he’s doing what’s best for Sparta, and he’s honoured that he’s been sent on this mission—even if it did mean his position as General has been taken over by a brute he’s trained with since he was a child.

He’s in half a mind whether to ask if his position as General will still be there when all of this is over, but he decides quickly that he doesn’t want to know. There will be plenty of time to think about that later, he has enough on his mind here without having to think about what’s going on in Sparta.

“Anything else, Sire?”

Pike claps him on the back. “Enjoy your wedding night.”

Ah. The wedding night. The one thing he had been trying desperately hard not to think about. He felt awkward about it at best, having spent less than an hour with his new wife. He doesn’t even know where she was. Mingling somewhere, he assumes, talking politics by what he could tell earlier.

He spends the rest of the evening making himself known—to army officials, their soldiers and Generals, and especially to Kane. If anyone is going to give him information, it’s him.

Strangely, he finds he gets on better with Kane than he thought he would. Though he gives away no real information, it’s only a matter of time. He makes a point of telling him he was solely in charge of the training of the military back in Sparta, and as Greece’s best army, he’d be more than useful for training and battle plans.

He  _ may _ have over-exaggerated his role, he was still new and finding his feet, but Kane didn’t need to know that. Not now, not ever.

He’s pleasantly surprised at how friendly most Arcadians are. Maybe his stuck up perception of them was wrong, but then he reminds himself that he’s keeping his distance—he’s not getting attached to the people he’s planning on killing in war.

“Ready to go?” Clarke startles him, suddenly appearing behind him. He was so wrapped up in his own head that he forgot to be on high alert—something he won’t let happen again.

He nods, mouth suddenly dry. She really is beautiful, but then he thinks of what Murphy told him—she’s power-hungry and wouldn’t hesitate to break the fragile treaty they’ve got between their lands. He wonders why she agreed to it in the first place, but then he supposed that’s what he’s here to find out.

He says goodbye to his mother and sister, hugging them both tightly.

“Remember, the second anything goes wrong, come and find me. I’ll do anything,” his mother promises in a whisper. She must feel it too, the delicacy of all of this. He’s tried not to think what could happen if this all went wrong—if he were found out.

“I’ll be fine,” he promises her. She nods and pulls back, uncharacteristic tears in her eyes. It’s a mother’s job to send their sons to war, to die in honour. It’s something to always expect, but this is outside of either of their expectations—being married off and used as a political pawn. He doesn’t blame his mother for being emotional.

His mother nods tersely at Clarke, who nods back at her. With one last squeeze of her hand and a pat on his sister’s shoulder, he’s leaving. The last person he sees as he leaves the party is Pike, staring hard at him from across the room—the message is clear:  _ don’t mess this up. _

It’s a longer walk than he expected, but then he’s not sure why he should have had any expectations at all.

Arcadia is beautiful, though. Even in the dark the grand architecture and rolling hills and mountainside around them are impressive. The white stone buildings almost shine under the moonlight, if he let himself, he could appreciate that for the time being, this is home. But he doesn’t want this to be home, not like this. The city opens up and the night sky in front of him brings him the only comfort of home. At least the night sky is the same wherever you go.

“Arcadia is bigger than I expected,” he tries to make conversation, if only to break the tense silence. He’s not really seen much of Arcadia, and he had very little expectations for it. When he arrived this afternoon, he was taken straight to a room to get ready for the ceremony. Now he is here, going home for the first time.

Thinking of Arcadia as home leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. It's not his home, this is temporary. He won’t show that though.

Clarke’s chambers—rather, his chambers too, now—is larger than he’s ever seen of a chamber, larger even than Pike’s, but it doesn’t look like his. There’s no battle plan strewn around, all the surfaces are tidy and clean, and in fact, the entire room is bare. There’s nothing personal in here, nothing to say that Clarke would spend her time here.

Servants are waiting, several dotted around the room waiting for them. The door hasn’t even shut behind them and they’re pouncing on them. Apart from as a child, Bellamy has never been dressed or undressed before, so this is alien to him. He tries to tell them that he’s perfectly capable of doing this himself, but they ignore him until he’s resigned enough to let them help him into a night tunic.

“Leave,” Clarke demands when he’s dressed and feeling, well, uncomfortable. The servants bow and back out of the room. Clarke’s hair is loose now, falling over her shoulders in golden waves, free of the heavy woven crown. She’s in a simple tunic now, no golden embroidery or jewellery. “It’s easier if you just let them help you,” she sighs, making her way to the bed.

“I’m sorry I’m not used to people waiting on me hand and foot,  _ your majesty, _ ” he scathes. Having servants feels wrong, somebody waiting on him to do things he is perfectly capable of doing himself. He wonders if they’re even paid, or if the  _ honour _ of the job justifies.

She pauses just before she climbs into her side of the bed and looks over to him with venom in her eyes. “You think I’m used to this? I’ve been Queen for less than a week, thrown into a government that would reject me and that married me off to keep the peace with a country who three days ago wanted my head on spike.”

He laughs bitterly—she won’t find sympathy from him. “This was your doing, not mine. You agreed to the peace treaty, you wanted to become Queen. Don’t cry to me because your servants do too much for you.”

There’s a twist of anger in her face. Good, let her be angry. He doesn’t care. He climbs into bed and lays facing away from her. She follows suit and blows out the candle next to her bed, plunging the room into darkness.

He sleeps fitfully to say the least, vivid dreams of Pike taking over the city plague him—buildings burning and people screaming. Clarke turns to him and spits  _ ‘You did this.’ _

He wakes with a start to a distant chatter, the sound of laughter and banging. It takes him a beat too long to realise where he is.

He’s in Arcadia, he married the Queen yesterday. He has a job to do.

Clarke’s nowhere to be seen now, her side of the bed cold and neatly made around him. He wonders if the servants did that when she left and wonders how he could have slept through it. He climbs out of bed and opens the wardrobe, there’s already an array of tunics in there, his lined up neatly next to Clarke’s. He dresses in a hurry before the servants can get to him.

There’s a knock at the door and he awkwardly calls for them to come in. A servant with long dark hair nods at him and leaves a platter of bread and fruit on the table.

“Thank you.” He blinks, not used to being served like this still. He hopes he never gets used to it. “Do you know where Clarke is?”

The servant looks up and cocks her head at him. “She’s in meetings, of course. She told me to tell you to feel free to explore anywhere in the city, the people of Arcadia will be more than pleased to help you with anything you need.”

He doubts that very much, but he nods and thanks her anyway for her help. He sits next to the window to eat his breakfast. Arcadia is vibrant and bursting with life, children run free and happy while their parents stop to chat. Market stools are bustling in the distance—the people here seem happy, much freer than they do back in Sparta. He pushes that thought away when he thinks of what Pike said back in Sparta, his people want the kind of freedoms that Arcadia has. He’s not here for freedom.

The day is hot and clear when he gets outside, and as beautiful as it is, he really has no idea where he’s going. The city is vast and busy, and the buildings are intimidating. He should really be finding his way around the place, but with no clear landmarks, he doesn’t know where to start.

“Hello,” a voice says cautiously from behind him, making him jump. He really should be on a higher alert. A woman stands behind him, in a long white tunic and long dark hair falling down her shoulders. She smiles catlike at him and gives him an appraising glance over. He steps back uncomfortably with a frown. “I’m Raven.”

“Bellamy.” He nods.

“I know.” The woman grins. “I was at your wedding.”

There’s no anonymity here—he’s sure the entire of Arcadia was at his wedding, or at least the feast after it. “Of course you were.”

“Clarke asked me to show you around the city and Kane asked me to bring you to him, so I’m killing two birds with one stone. Come on, daylight's wasting and I’m not getting any younger.” Raven strides off ahead of him, leaving him to catch up. Raven walks faster than any warrior he’s ever met, she’d possibly scarier than them too. He quite likes her though, she’s quick-witted and clever, perhaps a little frosty but he would be too. She points out buildings along the way to wherever they’re going, mostly temples. He’s never seen so many in all his life, he wonders if there’s a purpose to having that many. Surely the gods will hear them from a single temple?

“So how do you know Clarke?” he questions as they make their way through a marketplace. People barter with stool vendors in good humour—there’s laughter and chatter, men stand proudly by their wives’ side, not in armour and not at war. It’s alien to him.

“What makes you think anybody in Arcadia doesn’t know Clarke?” she shoots back, and she’s got a point.

“Okay, what makes you so special that you got the honour of showing me around when my new wife apparently couldn’t?”

“Clarke and I have been friends for a long time, she trusts me. Besides, I’m the best for the job.”

He snorts in good humour. “Yeah, I bet. Where is Clarke, anyway?”

“In meetings.” Raven shrugs. “No rest for the wicked.”

Bellamy doesn’t comment on the latter, but he finds it strange that she’s in meetings already. Surely her council would give her at least the morning off after her wedding. Even if their wedding night only ended in an argument. “You’d think she’d stop to rest for at least the morning.”

Raven throws a grin over her shoulder. “Wars don’t stop just because somebody gets married, somebody's always going to try and kick you when you’re down.”

“There’s a war being declared?” he questions—this was news to him. As far as he was aware, Sparta is their biggest foe, and they were now under a faux peace treaty.

“Isn’t there always,” Raven huffs, but doesn’t say any more on the matter.

He stores that information away; it will come in handy at some point he’s sure. He doesn’t need to say any more as they come to stop at what he assumes is the training ground. Smaller than the one in Sparta, and much less organised. Kane’s standing to the side, watching in discontent as the warriors spar against one another.

Raven calls out to Kane. He looks over sharply, then with a last glance back to the training ground, he makes his way over to them.

“Here he is,” Raven announces brightly, “brought to you in pieces as you requested.”

Kane doesn’t smile at Raven, he barely even acknowledges her existence, she just slips away quietly when Kane grasps his elbow in greeting. “Bellamy.” He nods. “Nice to see you again.”

Bellamy doesn’t mention that they saw each other just hours ago, just nods in return. Kane steps aside and gestures to the training grounds. “What do you think?”

It’s a loaded question, there’s lots that Bellamy’s thinking—he just won’t say it aloud, especially not to the General.

“Looks good,” he lies convincingly, a skill he’s well versed in now.

“It’s dreadful.” There’s no tone to his voice, nothing passionate about his words. “They’re sloppy and inept. They are in no way ready to go to war.”

So there is a war. He suspects there was more to this marriage agreement than a peace treaty between them. He wonders what the terms were of the agreement, would Pike agree to fight Arcadia's wars to keep them off his own scent?

“They could certainly improve,” Bellamy agrees cautiously. This is it, this is how he infiltrates their army. Arcadia had handed it to him on a silver platter without even realising it. “With some guidance.”

Kane gives him a sideways glance. “That’s what you’re here for. As part of the alliance, you were sent to help train the military.”

Bellamy looks back out to the soldiers with a frown, wondering if Pike is actually expecting him to train the military, or to just gather information. He has a role to play, a ruse to keep up. So he agrees to help train them, but he makes no promises to the standard though.

He has to wonder if Arcadia is really that naive, to let a Spartan warrior who's been in their territory just a day help train their army. Is it a show of faith, or are they keeping him close, keeping as much of an eye on him as he is on them.

The sun is setting when he gets back to his chambers, casting an orange glow through the open door to the balcony. There’s food already laid out for him, enough for one, so he guesses that Clarke won’t be joining him tonight. She really has taken _ political marriage _ to heart.

At least his first day has been a success, he muses over his platter of meat and bread. He thought he’d have a challenge, trying to drag information out of somebody, but instead, Kane happily gave away their plans.

He has to remind himself to be aware that Kane could be tricking him, giving him incorrect information if he suspects that Bellamy’s a spy. He has to play his role delicately, keep his cards close to his chest.

He watches the sunset over the mountains—it really is beautiful here, and it really is a shame that soon enough Sparta will take it over.

The red glow turns to darkness and he watches stars shoot over the night sky, moon full and proud above him.

He’s not sure how long he’s sat there when he finally sees Clarke making her way back across the forecourt. She looks exhausted by the time she finally gets into the chambers; she waves away the servants attempts to undress her, and instead sits at the small table in the room and pours herself a cup of wine. She doesn’t make an attempt to talk to Bellamy, she doesn’t even acknowledge his existence.

“Hard day drawing up battle plans?” he mutters, just loud enough for her to hear. “Must be hard, making all those decisions on how to destroy innocent people’s lives.”

Clarke laughs bitterly. “You’re one to talk. Sparta’s been in more battles than I can keep count of.”

“Sparta doesn’t start battles, they retaliate.”

Her laugh is one of surprise now. “Is that really what you believe? I’m really not the monster you all make me out to be.”

He won’t raise to her bait. He knows what she’s doing, painting Sparta out to be the enemy so she can justify a war. It won’t work—he’s much too clued up for that. He’s already been warned that Clarke is a warmonger, that she would use any justification possible to start a war. That’s what she wants Sparta for, to have an unbeatable army on her side.

What a shock she’s in for.

She stands when he doesn’t answer and goes to the wardrobe, picking out a night tunic. With no shame, she drops the tunic she’s wearing and slips on the night one. He looks away, red-faced and only a little embarrassed. He won’t deny that she’s attractive, but that’s not what he’s here for.

He lets her fall asleep before he undresses and slips into bed next to her, not wanting to lie in bed in tense silence.

Once again when he wakes in the morning, Clarke’s gone and the bed’s left neat, as if she were never there. This time, he eats breakfast and makes his way straight to the training grounds. Kane’s already there, shouting at young warriors for not staying in line.

“Jake let them have too much freedom,” Kane explains bitterly. “He wanted the warriors to be here by choice or punishment, but not as something that is expected of them. As a result, we have delinquents and criminals that won’t be kept in line. There are very few good soldiers,” he finishes with a grumble.

It is worse and better than he thought. Worse for them—their army is young and awfully untrained. They don’t stand a chance in a real battle, which is imminent by the sounds of things.

“You talk as if they’re preparing for battle tomorrow,” Bellamy enquiries casually, watching a poor sparring match.

“Athens is not happy with our new choice of Queen. They wish to pull out of a peace agreement, which could lead to war. I need them as prepared as possible.”

Surely Kane must know that spoon-feeding him this information is not going to end well for Arcadia. He wonders briefly if he cares, but then he wouldn’t be training the army if he didn’t care.

Bellamy still has a job to do, a ruse to keep up, so he gets to work with the army—starting with the very basics, taking his time with them, and going over each point concisely. Perhaps it’s a more pedantic routine than necessary, but who were they to question a Spartan General?

Clarke’s not in the chambers when he gets back. It doesn’t look like she’s been there either. He’s guessing that she’s preparing for whatever repercussions this breakdown of Athens’s peace treaty will bring. There’s parchment and ink in the drawer of the dresser, he pulls it out hastily and writes in code—if anybody were to find it, they would simply think he’s written a dull letter, but Pike will understand the codes written between the lines. Now all he needs is his cue to send it.

His routine goes like that—Kane gives away a little too much information, he writes letters and stores them away. Clarkes comes home tenser and tenser with each passing night, rising to his scathing remarks with harsh quips of her own. Then they lie facing away from each other. He always wakes alone.

He tries his hardest to find out more information from Kane—Clarke doesn’t tell him anything. But Kane slowly feeds him information as his trust grows and their soldiers slowly improve. Of course, they could be improving much faster, if it were his army back home, they’d be perfect warriors by now.

But he’s not going to give Arcadia an army to rival Sparta, that would not be a smart move on his part —it would be one that got his head on a spike.

There’s a growing urgency to the training though. He’s never seen battle plans or heard of strategies, but he knows the council keeps Clarke locked up to talk about those.

That changes one night when he goes to bed before Clarke’s back. He’s fast asleep before she can come in. He wakes in darkness, it’s rare for him, he usually sleeps until the early morning sun wakes him up. He doesn’t understand what would wake him up so late at night. There's a breeze blowing through the room and that’s when he realises the doors to the balcony are still open. He doesn’t usually leave them open at night. With a grimace he swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands slowly, making his way to the balcony doors.

In his overtired state, he hadn’t even considered that it may have been Clarke that opened the doors. She wasn’t in bed next to him, and in all honesty, he’d sort of forgotten about her existence until he heard her sniffling out on the balcony. He’s in half a mind to just go back to bed and go back to sleep, but he’s got this strange weakness for seeing people cry. He hates it—right from when his sister was a baby, he couldn’t stand to see her cry. It is a poor trait to have as a soldier, but it was the one thing he could never shake.

He sits in the wicker chair next to her; she hasn’t even noticed his existence yet. He doesn’t make himself known, just sits and waits for her to notice him.

“Go back to bed, Bellamy,” she finally sniffs, maybe she had noticed he was there.

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”

She laughs, bitter and sordid, “Like you care.”

Maybe not, but she’s still here sobbing on the balcony and he may not like her, but he still wants to know what’s going on.

“Maybe me not caring is all the more reason to tell me. I’ll let you know if it’s worth crying over.”

When she laughs this time, it’s genuine and surprised. She shakes her head and wipes her eyes. “I don’t want to go to war,” she whispers pitifully into the night. “I don’t want to be known as the Queen who got her people killed.”

“Then don’t.” It seems like such an obvious solution—if she doesn’t want to go to war, then don’t engage. The way Kane’s been pushing the army, he’s sure war is imminent anyway, and the way he talks—the subtle remarks he makes, it sounded like Clarke was ready to attack at any day.

She looks conflicted, hair pale in the moonlight—she really was beautiful. “What am I supposed to do? Athens could attack any day now, I’ve been trying to sort out a peace treaty but I can’t get married every time someone wants to start a war with us.”

It takes him by surprise. He’d thought of her as a ruthless leader, bloodthirsty and cruel. That’s the picture that had been painted to him, even by her own General. Are everyone’s views on her wrong, or is she changing her ways? For a moment he considers that this could be her own ruse, that she knows he’s planning on sending information back to Pike, she’s throwing them off the scent. He doesn’t know enough about her in the first place to know. Although he cannot hope that Arcadia  _ doesn’t _ go to war—he’s more conflicted about it than he was before.

“Will Athens not accept a peace deal?” he asks. He can’t imagine Athens actively wanting to go to war with them, they were supposed to be allies when Jake was king.

“Athens isn’t the problem, my council doesn't want to extend any of the offers I draw up. Time’s running thin and so is Athens’s patience. If I don’t do something soon, Athens will attack, but if I extend the deal without their approval, the council will turn against me.” A tear runs down her cheek again. He almost feels the need to wipe it away—almost.

Arcadia and Athens being at war doesn’t help him right now. He needs solid plans, he needs information and he won’t get that if there’s a war on. So his advice is selfish, but it’s necessary. “I thought the Queen would have made the rules, not the council. As far as I knew your council was there to advise you, not rule you.”

Clarke gives him a guarded look, but she’s thinking it over, he can tell by the glint in her eyes.

“You'd think so, yes. But it’s not as simple as that. They hate me for being a woman, and for knowing my own mind.” He’s surprised by her honesty. Up until this point, they’ve not had a relationship where they shared information. 

Perhaps that was his first mistake, not playing his part correctly. Although Kane’s trust was easy enough to win over, maybe he should have been winning hers too. 

Bellamy nods sympathetically. “That’s hardly a bad quality to have in a Queen,” he says, feeling a pang of guilt. This girl is as much a pawn to larger schemes as he is, and she bore the burden of her people—shouldering their pain so they wouldn’t have to. 

He feels sorry for her suddenly. She looks small beside him—vulnerable. He hesitates a moment, but decides the title of husband allows him the right and so he takes her small pale hand in his own large, tan one. 

He half expects her to stop him, but when she tightens her grip in gratitude, he can’t help the sudden surge of emotion that threatens. She’s sitting beside her biggest enemy, but maybe he’s sitting by his too. 

Maybe he should use their marriage to his advantage like he should have been all along instead of being so hyper fixated on the army. It’s not like he’s not attracted to her, and he knows she is too, he sees her watching him sometimes, the rare moments together he sees her when he undresses. 

“You’re my wife,” he says, pulling her up from her chair and leading her back into their room. “My Queen. I care what you think.” It’s a dangerous confession, and it’s about to lead to much more. He never did truly consider their marriage as a potential for information—always saw Clarke as closed off, but he was too. Now is the time to rectify that.

“I think,” she says, her tone shifting devilishly. “That we’ve yet to make this marriage official.” 

Bellamy smirks at her, they’re on the same page at least. “A lapse that can be remedied if you ask nicely.”

“Would you really tease me like that?” she asks, blushing. 

“With pleasure,” he replies, running his index finger slowly down the smooth skin of her forearm. “You can have anything you desire, anything that is in my power to give you, but you must ask me for it.”

She bites her bottom lip, shivering at his delicate touch. “Will you lie with me?” she asks.

“I already am,” he replies. “You’ll have to do better than that—loose ends like that will do you no favours with your council.” 

She frowns, embarrassment flushing across her chest. Perhaps she’s used to be challenged over peace treaties and battle plans, but never like this. She’s young and inexperienced, but she has to learn to tell him what she wants. 

“Will you fuck me, Bellamy?” 

“As you wish.” His tone is hoarse with want, but his movements are controlled. He reaches the hand not laced with hers to cup her face, drawing her close to him. 

“First I’ll kiss you,” he whispers against her cheek before capturing her lips with his. She tastes sweet, like the expensive wine she drinks, intoxicating and eager to make him forget himself. She meets him eagerly, pressing herself against his chest, tugging at his clothing. 

“Use your words,” he chides her between kisses. “Learn to make your demands heard.”

“Take this off,” she insists, pawing at his tunic. “I want to feel you.”

“As my Queen commands,” he says, complying quickly. She tries to follow suit, reaching for the ties of her own robe but he pulls her hands away.

“I'll do it,” he insists, pulling at the knots holding the fabric on her body. 

“Should you not ask for such privileges as well?” she asks coyly.

“I’m a Spartan,” he reminds her. “I take what I want.” 

She should be offended by the assertion, angry even, but the surge of wetness between her legs assures him that’s not the case.

“Will you fuck me now?” she asks sweetly.

“Mm,” he moans against the hollow of her throat, hand tangled in the knots of her robe still. “Not yet. But soon.”

He finally pulls the fabric from her body, stepping back to drink in every inch of her. He expects her to shrink from his gaze, but she stands unwavering, daring him to find fault in her features.

“Are you certain you aren’t a Goddess sent from Olympus itself?” he asks hungrily.

She laughs at him. “I’m no Goddess, only a Queen dying slowly of want.” He laughs in return, denying himself the chance to reach for her.

“I told you, wife, you need only ask.”

“Please take me now.” She grabs at his wrists, guiding his hands to rest upon her breasts. “Touch me, please.” 

“You beg so beautifully,” he says. She preens, pleased with the result she can very easily see she’s having on him.

He holds her breasts heavy in his palms, relishing their weight, delighting in the pleasurable contortion of her face when he glides his calloused palms across her nipples. 

“Please,” she says again. “Please—“

“Be specific,” he reminds her. “Leave no room for misinterpretation.”

“Please fuck me, now,” she says, claiming his wrists again and pulling him towards their bed.

“Good,” he says sincerely, taking note of the sudden flush of heat on her face when she hears his approval. “Lie back for me, get comfortable.”

She settles herself quickly, pulling her towards him into a heady kiss. He means to correct her for not asking, but he’s beginning to lose track of just what was so important about making her ask in favour of how painfully hard he is becoming with this stunning woman, his wife no less, writhing beneath him. 

“Have you done this before?” he asks her. There is no shame in it where he comes from—to be with someone or many someone’s, before marriage, but he doesn’t know much of Arcadia’s opinions on the matter.

“Not with a man,” she answers matter of factly. “But I’m well aware of how it’s done.” He takes a split second to collect himself, eyes wide in arousal at the images her words had conjured. 

“Then despite your well pleaded demands, I must take my time,” he answers, planting a tender kiss to her temple.

_ Fool, _ he admonishes himself.  _ You do not care for her. There is no need to be kind. _

“I trust you,” she says, suddenly looking as small and vulnerable as she had when speaking of her council. 

_ Oh, _ he wants to laugh,  _ you shouldn’t _ .

_ Damn your softness,  _ he berates himself further, but he pays the thought no mind, focusing all of his attention on his wife beneath him. 

She takes his hand again, lacing her fingers securely within his own. He holds fast, anchoring her to him, bodies flush.

“I won’t hurt you,” he vows, swallowing down the lie. He knows he won’t hurt her tonight, but sometime, perhaps not even soon, but at some point they’ll be at war and she’ll think of this as a bitter memory. 

“I know,” she assures him. 

He nods before placing another kiss to her temple. “Stay still for me.” 

He lowers himself slightly, keeping one hand laced with hers and brushing the other between her folds. Clarke whimpers with need, bucking up into his hand.

“Patience,” he reminds her gently. “Let me get you ready.”

“I won’t break,” she tells him.

“I want you to enjoy this,” he says sincerely. “Let me make sure of it.” 

He shouldn’t be making himself vulnerable to her, but it’s the only way to get what he wants. There’s a part of him that he’s pushed away that’s craved this too. 

“That’s it,” he tells her gently. “Just let me take care of you.” Bellamy keeps his thumb stroking against her clit, working a single digit inside of her. 

“ _ Oh _ ,” she sighs.

“I’ve barely started, princess.” He grins at her, working another finger inside of her. She meets his pace eagerly, thrusting against his hand.

“More, please,” she gasps.

“More what?” he asks, unable to resist teasing her. 

“Just more, Bellamy please!” 

“I’ve got you,” he says, positioning himself over her. She leans up into him greedily, kissing him hard. He groans against her mouth, impatient with himself at this point. 

“I’m ready,” she tells him earnestly. “Please,”

He kisses her again, squeezing the hand still trapped in his tightly. He slides himself into her slowly, watching her face carefully for any sign of discomfort.

“Are you alright?” he asks her once he’s fully seated inside of her, holding himself still.

“Gods above Bellamy, move,  _ please _ .” She thrusts her hips against him, desperate for more.

He complies eagerly, pressing down to meet her thrust for thrust. 

“So good,” he murmurs against her cheek. “So good for me,”

She moans against him, a renewed surge of want growing from his praise. 

“That’s it,” he tells her eagerly. “Gods,  _ Clarke _ ,”

Their pace grows frantic, he’s close but determined to have her climax first. He reaches a hand between them to run his thumb across her clit, sending her over the edge. 

He tumbles after her, sated and spent. He settles beside her for just a moment, catching his breath, hand still locked tight with hers.

“You probably want to wash,” he says quietly.

She blinks slowly, then settles herself against his chest, surprising him again.

“Yes, but not yet.”

*

She’s gone again when he wakes up—just like their marriage, sex is a business arrangement too. 

That’s fine by him, as long as it is an ongoing business arrangement. He dresses slowly before the servants can make their way anywhere near him and heads to the training grounds. Summer hasn’t reached its peak yet and the days are only getting hotter. He crosses through an alley, bathed in shadow from the crowded buildings on either side. 

There’s a figure crouched on the floor with a hood covering their face, while Bellamy thinks it odd, how somebody could be so swallowed by their clothes in this heat, he doesn’t say anything—it’s none of his business.

“Spare a coin?” the figure asks as he walks past. Bellamy freezes as a chill runs down his spine, he’d know that voice anywhere. He checks around the alley, but there’s not another soul to be seen. 

“Murphy,” he growls, not looking down. “What Zeus’ name are you doing here?”

The hood falls down and Murphy grins slyly and calculated. “You’ve been here weeks.” He stands slowly, stretching out his stiff legs. “Pike hopes you have some information for him.” There’s an implication of _ or else  _ there, but it doesn’t need to be said. He knows what he’s here for—he’s got his information stored away, written on parchment and hidden from Clarke and anybody else who happens to come into their room. 

“I have, but it’s not safe here.”

Murphy’s face stays blank, but Bellamy would be stupid to think that Murphy didn’t already have a plan in place. “Meet me by the old temple after dark, when your wife’s asleep.”

His jaw tenses at the thought of potentially being caught, but as far as he knows, Murphy’s done plenty of missions like this and has never been caught, so he has at least a bit of faith. “She doesn’t come home until late,” he grits out, warning him of what he’s getting into.

Murphy just quirks a brow at him, “I can wait. Maybe you can wear her out a bit.”

Bellamy has to try hard to keep his temper in check—he lets the comment go over his head. “I’ll meet you when she’s asleep.”

“Fantastic. Run along to your training session—can’t have you being late to class, can we now?”

“Just stay out of sight,” Bellamy mumbles, turning away from him and starts back down the alley. He can’t concentrate during the training session, his mind on staying out of sight tonight—and staying away long enough to meet Murphy. He can’t mess up this meeting, he can’t have Pike losing trust in him—it would cost him his head. 

He’s anxious for the rest of the day, the soldiers training don’t know what’s hit them when he makes them do practice drills over and over. Kane watches from the sidelines, but doesn’t say anything. 

“Jasper,” Bellamy barks for what seems like the hundredth time, “keep in line, attack, don’t just defend. Go again—Miller, you’re up with him.”

Jasper’s practically shaking when he stands face to face with Miller. Bellamy has no sympathy though, he shouldn’t be here if he isn’t capable of fighting. Bellamy moves closer to them, watching each move closely—there’s not a twitch of their finger or a bead of sweat that he doesn’t see. 

“Attack,” Bellamy orders again, Jasper dives forward sloppily, Miller blocks the attack with little effort. 

“Again. Don’t just dive, don’t let the enemy know you’re attacking.” His bad temper’s showing today. He’s not used to inept soldiers. In Sparta they can use a sword before they can use a spoon, long before they’re enlisted into the army. It’s ingrained into them—he’s never met a bad soldier. 

He never thought he’d meet one as bad as Jasper. It goes to show the weak ruling in Arcadia, no leader worth their role would ever let an army get this bad, and no General would ever, ever let training slip to these dismal standards. As far as he’s aware, Kane has been General for a long time, long before Clarke took rule. So what in Zeus's name has he been doing all this time?

He takes the sword off Miller and jerks his head for him to step aside. There’s a worried murmur across the training grounds, not just because of Bellamy’s bad mood, but he doesn’t think a General has ever gotten involved in the training sessions before.

No wonder they’re all so atrocious. 

“Watch carefully,” he instructs the rest of the soldiers. This is childsplay, it’s what he and his friends would do for fun as a child. He can’t believe he’s having to teach basics this far into training. 

“Step forward, strike.” He strikes towards Jasper, lightning fast, then pulls back. Jasper barely has time to defend with his shield.

“Strike left, strike right, strike straight ahead.” There’s a sheen of sweat over Jasper's face, he struggles to pick up his shield in time for each attack. “You won’t always have a shield with you on the battlefield. You might take it with you, but probably won’t end with it. You need to learn to defend with your sword.”

Something doesn’t sit right with him, that they haven’t already been taught this. He wonders what kind of warrior Kane was in his day, or even now. 

“Drop your shields and practice defending with a sword. My sister could beat you in battle.”

He doesn’t mention that his sister could beat  _ him _ in battle, they don’t need to know that bit of information. He stands next to Kane on the sidelines, watching the practice with disregard.

“If war is coming like you’re afraid, you’ll be defeated before they’re even on the battlefield.” Bellamy tells him bluntly. Kane doesn’t react, just stares across the training grounds at the soldiers he’s failed to train properly.

*

That night, he lays awake in bed—which is easier said than done when Clarke doesn’t come home until well past high moon.

Home. When had he started thinking of here as home, not even Arcadia, but their chambers? Maybe since the night before. He knows his job–he knows what he’s here to do, and that is certainly not to develop feelings for his wife. He doesn’t have feelings, not after Gina. He knows that love hurts, and he won’t put himself in that position again, especially when he’ll only have to betray her. 

He closes his eyes and tries to even out his breathing when he hears the door open. Clarke steps in with a sigh and clicks the door shut behind her. She’s quiet as she moves around the room, which explains how she’s never woken him up. As much as he’d like to watch her undress, and have a repeat of last night, he doesn’t dare open his eyes. 

She slides into bed next to him, and he feels her eyes on him. He tries to keep as relaxed as possible, but it’s difficult when she strokes the hair out of his eyes. How he longs to look up to her and see what she’s seeing. 

Finally, she lies down and rolls away from him. He waits and waits until finally, her breathing evens out, and then he waits a little longer. Finally, he slips out of bed and takes his cloak and rolls of parchment from under the bed and sneaks away into the night. 

Arcadia at night reminds him of his wedding night—the serenity of the usually busy city illuminated in the moonlight. There’s no party in the distance now, no celebrations and uncertainty about what married life would bring him.

Murphy’s waiting in the shadows, hood up and disguised well—if you don’t know where to look for him. 

“You’re not as slick as you think you are,” Bellamy announces when he sees Murphy’s silhouette against the white marble temple. He pushes off and saunters towards Bellamy, pulling his hood down to reveal his smirk in the dark. He’s deathly pale for somebody who spends so much time in the sun. 

“I never claimed to be slick. Do you have it?”

Bellamy passes him the sack of parchment. He’s proud of the information that he’s gotten in such a short amount of time, if he’d have known it was going to be this easy, he’d have suggested a ‘peace treaty’ a long time ago. In the back of his mind, it’s been a little too easy, but then, this is a small city. He wonders if they’re more naïve than he gives them credit for.

Somewhere deeper, he wonders if Kanes even given him the correct information, but that’s for Pike to decide.

“So, how’s married life treating you?” Murphy asks conversationally, but there’s a mocking undertone. 

Bellamy rolls his eyes. “It’s fantastic, Murphy. Thanks for asking.”

“Yeah? Not got your Queen into a situation just yet? That would be interesting, the child of an Arcadian Queen and her traitorous husband.”

He grits his teeth—he knows Murphy is trying to get a rise out of him, isn’t he always? It’s in his nature. So he doesn’t respond, just gives him a passive look and asks, “Anything else?”

“Not for now. I’ll be back though, keep up the good work soldier.” With that, Murphy walks into the night and blends in with the inky shadows. He stops for a moment in the silence of the city he’s slowly growing fond of, or maybe it’s the Queen asleep in his bed that the fondness is for.

Clarke’s still fast asleep when he gets back, so he slips back into bed as quietly as he can, and lets exhaustion take over.

When he awakes with the sun, Clarkes still there. There’s a pit in his stomach, something tells him that she knows—she wasn’t asleep last night, or she woke up when he was gone and figured out where he was. What happens to a traitor in this city? Moreover, what happens to the traitor who dares betray the Queen?

“Morning.” She smiles as she fixes her robe. He tries to remember what he did with his cloak last night, he’s sure it’s under the bed.

“Good morning.” He nods, sitting up in bed and trying to subtly kick his leg under the bed. It’s still there, he kicks it further under, as out of sight he can hope for it to be. “You’re usually gone by now.” He hopes his voice is even—he’s a warrior, he knows how to keep his nerves in check, but he’s never stared at death when she looks as sweet as this.

“I’ve told the council they can wait this morning—they see me as quite the defiant Queen these days.”

“So you told them you didn’t want to go to war?” He can’t tell if she’s distracting him or not, she is well versed in keeping her cool in bad situations—as a princess, she had grown up in a political environment, so he knows she learnt a trick or two from all her time sitting in councils—she must have. 

“I told them I was offering a peace treaty, and I am. I’m confident Athens will accept—I just wanted to say thank you, for the other night.”

He quirks an eyebrow and smirks “You don’t have to thank me for that.”

Clarke laughs and shakes her head. In the morning light, she’s radiant. A red flush crawls up her neck, and he knows she’s thinking about it. 

“Maybe we’ll do it again sometime,” he smirks. This is supposed to be for purely tactical reasons, he isn’t supposed to be falling for her. 

The returned beam reignites something he thought was long lost. He is walking dangerous territory here. This was never in the plan, but he can’t help himself but to cup the soft skin of her cheek and press his lips to hers. She melts into him, gripping the front of his robe in fists. 

Dangerous territory indeed.

***

Clarke’s hands shake as she stands before the council. Never before did she think she would have to justify her actions to anybody as much as she has since taking reign, let alone to a room full of men. 

“You should have let Athens have their war,” one spits at her—she can’t tell who, the candles are barely enough to illuminate the battle plans on the table in front of them, let alone their faces. It doesn’t matter, though—she doesn’t need to see who said it, it barely even matters that it was said. 

“I will not put my peoples lives in danger over a pointless war.” She holds her head high, her age steely as she looks pointedly around the table. “You are here to advise, and I chose not to take that advice.”

There's a bitter laugh somewhere—it sounds like Kane, but she can’t be sure. “Foolish girl. Athens will only pick a new battle, it’s in their nature. They won’t rest until they have their war.”

Her tempers dissolving quickly. She’s not well known for having a good temper at the best of times—they use it against her, use it as a darkness where a man would be praised for his passion. “We have a peace treaty in place, if you would just look over what we have agreed on–” she tries to stay as even as possible, which gets considerably more difficult when she’s cut off.

“We don’t need to look over a meaningless piece of paper when Athens is only going to turn their back on it the first opportunity they get.”

She grits her teeth, fists clenching at her sides.  _ Do not lose your temper _ , she wills herself,  _ do not give into them. _

“They honoured it before I became Queen, they’ll honour it again. Need I remind you that I was voted in, not you.”

“This is why we should never have let a woman lead—it was a nice commemoration to Jake's memory, but you’re no ruler, child. Step back and be the front face of the city, but you’re not fit to be rule.”

“I am your Queen,” she implores, the anger bubbling beneath the surface finally rising and overflowing. “You will show me the respect I deserve. You were fine with marrying me off to a Spartan General to keep the peace with Sparta, but root for a war with Athens. Let me make one thing clear—we are not going to war unless we are attacked. As a leader it’s my duty to keep my people safe, it’s my duty to my city and you will not overrule my decisions because I’m a woman.”

The loud silence that follows is more satisfying than any argument. Her councils staring at her agape—although they’re well used to her temper by now, they’re not used to it being aimed at them. She stands tall and proud—she’s a leader before anything, and she’ll lead with pride and dignity and morals.

“I will not be a leader who kills her people. If you want to follow a leader like that then I have no problem with any of you leaving for Sparta or Athens. I’ll make this clear—we avoid war at all costs. We don’t start them, we don’t get involved in other nations' wars, we go to war as a last resort. Do you all understand, or would you like to go and live under Pike’s ruling and send your children to war every turn of the sun?”

Her council are warmongers, and furthermore they’ll do anything to prove her a bad leader. She dismisses them with a flick of her hand and a glare, letting herself deflate in the throne that causes her so much pain.

“Leave,” she demands, bracing her hands on the table. She doesn’t look up as her council make their way out, she doesn’t want to look at them right now.

Oh, how much more simple her life would be if she were content with being a housewife. She would raise a brood like her mother so wished for, and settle down quietly and live her life in peace. It was never a dream she had, it would never be her. She had married for necessity, but at some point that changed. Perhaps it was the pressure of her role—the crown is heavy and the world drags her down. She feels like Atlas holding the weight of other sins. But maybe it’s the man she shares her bed with—she had little desire to know him, to be touched by him or to touch him. Now, he turns to her when she quietly climbs into bed and asks if everything’s alright.

She thought she had built a wall so impenetrable it would never crumble, but somehow dark eyes and a soft touch have poked holes in her defence.

“I thought I’d find you here,” the voice pulls her out of her thoughts. Clarke looks up in surprise to see Raven looking around the room in interest. “Why is it so dark in here?”

“So I don’t have to see my Council's faces,” Clarke mutters. “What are you doing here?”

Raven holds up a bottle of wine and shakes it at her, “Fresh from the Vineyard.”

“Well, how can I say no to that?” Clarke smiles, pushing her cup towards Raven. 

“Yammas.” Raven raises her cup. 

Clarke raises her own with a smile. “Yammas.”

They sit in comfortable silence, though Clarke’s sure Raven didn’t come here for this—or at least not just this. Clarke’s just happy that she doesn’t have to talk to a room of men trying to convince her that she wants to go to war. 

“So,” Raven begins conversationally, “are we preparing for war?”

Clarke smiles into her cup, “Oh I see, you came here for gossip, not to see me.”

“I can see my friend and get gossip at the same time. What’s the point of being friends with the Queen if I don’t get all the best gossip first?”

“Fair point.” Clarke nods. “But no, there’s no war, much to my councils disgust. I’m signing a peace treaty with Athens and Sparta doesn’t seem to be a threat. I’m afraid all seems very peaceful right now.”

“How boring.” Raven frowns. “Jasper’s been getting on my nerves, and I know he’d be the first to be killed in battle.”

“You’ll have to talk to my husband about a tactical training ground accident for that.”

Clarke doesn’t understand the ridiculous grin that Raven’s got on her face, unless she’s thinking about killing Jasper—in which case she’s very deeply disturbed. 

“You just called him your husband,” Raven quirks. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you call him anything but  _ him _ before.”

Clarke rolls her eyes, but she’s got a point. Her animosity has turned into affection—it’s been slow and reluctant, and it’s required more trust than she thought she was willing to give to a stranger, let alone a Spartan warrior, but she was getting there. 

“Well, he  _ is  _ my husband, and I no longer want to slit his throat while he’s asleep so that’s something.” Clarke snorts, though the confession makes her blush. Raven notices despite the dim lighting in here and it only adds to her glee. 

“I never thought I’d see the day you’d blush talking about someone. It’s nice, just surprising.”

Clarke doesn’t answer, just carries on drinking her wine. Her head’s happily fuzzy, the wine’s stronger than she anticipated—not that she’s complaining. She needed this—some downtime not looking over battle plans or fighting with her council. 

She’s missed this, sitting around with a bottle of wine with Raven. Though before they would be talking idle gossip, now she's the frontline of the gossip, talking about impending wars and arranged marriages. 

“Still trying to change the world?” Raven asks softly. The sun’s probably well past the horizon right now and they’re both pleasantly merry and for just a moment, she is normal. 

“Maybe one day I’ll be content with the life I have, but until then yes, I’m going to try and change the world,” she murmurs, though the words slur slightly more than they should. She’s the Queen, she shouldn’t be getting drunk in her parliament. 

But it’s nice. The only times gets to drink is of a nighttime when she feels like no one else in Arcadia is awake. It’s nice to feel like the weight of the world isn’t on her shoulders. 

She leaves well past the moon’s highest point and walks the barren streets that she’s trying so desperately hard to keep her nation peaceful. It would be her dying wish to keep it that way.

She undresses in silence and slips under the covers, Bellamy’s fast asleep next to her—the sight brings a pang of sadness. In another life, they would have met in different circumstances, fell in love at their own pace and lived in peace. For the first time she desperately wishes for that.

She presses a kiss to his shoulder and for the first time falls asleep knowing nightmares will not plague her sleep.

The sun illuminates the room when she awakes—she’s missed the glow of sunrise, and doesn’t miss it one bit. Bellamy’s dressing quietly at the end of the bed, unaware he’s being watched so she takes the moment to watch and appreciate him like he deserves to be.

“Enjoying the view?” he murmurs, voice deep and gravelly from sleep.

“You should know I am.” She smiles, softer than she’s used to. He crawls over the bed, leaning over her and pressing his lips against hers, demanding her attention that she’ll happily give. She pulls him down, grasping at his shoulders until he grins against her.

“I have training.” He laughs, but despite that he pulls down the covers to cover her body with his.

“I’m your Queen, would you dare defy my wishes?”

“Never,” he breathes, lips moving down to her neck, worshipping her skin. “But explaining this to Kane may prove difficult.”

“Okay.” she laughs, “later, then.”

“Later,” he promises, sitting up while still straddling her. He brushes a wisp of hair from her face, fingers trailing down her cheek and thumb caressing her lips. “I was surprised to see you still asleep when I woke up.”

“I surprised myself,” she confesses, “but I’m glad I did.”

“Me too. You work too much.”

She deflates back into her pillows when he climbs off her. Oh how she’s missed her bed.

“I wanted to ask you something, actually.” She’s not sure where the sudden shyness comes from, when she can stand in front of a council of men trying to drag her down and still hold her head high.

“Oh?” He quirks a brow at her and she blushes—this is ridiculous, she shouldn’t be bushing just from her husband looking at her.

“There’s a festival tomorrow, we have it every year, it’s the Festival of Dionysus, it’s something we do every year. There’s entertainment of sorts, for some reason everyone becomes a comedian this time of the year. There’s lots of wine and food and—yeah if he was a god of it, we celebrate it. Anyway, you don’t have to come to it—I know you don’t really feel like this is home but I thought it might be a nice time to come see the city and the people. It’s laid back, we don’t sit on a throne or anything. It’s really just a big party. You don’t have to come, though.” She winces internally at her blabbering, somehow he makes her tongue tied and nervous—especially when he looks at her so endearingly.

“Who am I to defy my Queen's wishes?” It’s said in jest, but still it makes her blush. “Of course I’ll come.”

She smiles, relieved that she asked him in a semi-coherent way, and that he’d said yes. “Good, you’d better get to training before Kane starts asking too many questions. Wouldn’t want an awkward conversation now, would we?”

He laughs and there’s an eruption of butterflies in her stomach—it’s a little embarrassing at this point. “No, we wouldn’t,” he agrees.

“How is the training going? I never get a chance to talk to you about these things, and Kane doesn’t offer much.”

“Better.” He nods, somewhat reluctantly though. She knows she doesn’t have the kind of powerful army that Sparta commands. She knows their people have too much freedom, it’s a choice to go to war for them, and she wouldn’t wish the horrors of war on anyone. “I don’t think they’re quite ready to go to war just yet, though.”

“It’s a good thing I’m not planning any wars then, isn’t it?”

There’s an unreadable, and somewhat unsettling look on his face that she chooses to ignore. It can’t be easy—training another army that could potentially go to war with his own people at any point. If it were her choice, she wouldn’t have had him in the army at all. But then, Kane lives by his own rules—views her as too weak to make the big decisions and overrules her most of the time. That’s coming to a stop now, she won’t let herself be dictated.

“Well, you’d better go.” She tilts her head towards the door with a smile. Bellamy nods and turns towards the door, but then stops dead and turns back around, coming back around to her side of the bed and cupping her cheeks, kissing her softly before he goes.

She needs to catch herself before she falls.

*

There’s an excited buzz in the air the day of the celebrations. She wakes with Bellamy’s arm slung across her waist and she dare not move from fear of waking him. She has no meetings today, no council to fight with or plans to make—she can allow herself one day to be free like she used to be.

Bellamy stirs and turns towards her, nuzzling into her neck.

“Waking up next to you two days in a row? Who are you and what have you done with my wife?” he murmurs sleepily. She laughs and taps his arm, ignoring the giddy feeling of hearing him call her  _ his wife. _

“I don’t know what you mean” she simpers, turning to face him. In the months they’ve been married, she’s never woken up with him like this. She’s usually up and out before the sun rises. He snorts, eyes still closed but doesn’t comment back. Leaning forward, she presses a kiss softly to his brow. He pulls back in surprise and blinks sleepily.

“Oh, it’s  _ that  _ kind of morning?” he grins, alert now. He positions himself over her with a sly grin, but backs up when she tries to kiss him. They’ve never been like this, playful and light. They both hold great responsibilities and power—she no longer feels young.

She finally drags him down to her level, firmly planting her lips on his and melts into the kiss. She never thought she’d have this—never really wanted it, but he changed that and deep down, a part of her resents him for it. But the prominent, screaming voice in her heart tentatively loves him for it.

The moment, however, is ruined by a knock at the door.

“Go away,” she shouts, but the knocking persists. With a sigh, Bellamy rolls off her as the door swings open. She makes a mental note to continue this later.

They’re forced out of bed and dressed in their best tunics, Bellamy throws her the occasional smirk and she can’t help but grin like a love sick teenager.

The city’s in full celebration mode, stools with trinkets and food dotted around and children play happily. There’s stages at either side of the square, set up and ready for whatever entertainment they’ve deemed acceptable for today. Bellamy stays firmly by her side, watching the celebrations behind a blank mask. Here, he’s a true Spartan warrior—unfeeling and cold. She tries not to let it get to her too much, she knows it’s in his nature. It’s the same look Kane walks around with, stoic and hard—it’s a warrior's cross to bear.

She wishes they didn’t need warriors. More than anything she wanted to live in peace and harmony, but that is not the way of their world.

People stop, bow and curtsey to them, hand them stray flowers from the mountain sides that surround them. In a moment of peace, Bellamy threads flowers through the braids running across her crown. There’s a guarded smile when he looks at her from the corner of his eyes.

Her mother’s absence is noted, Bellamy comments lightly on it and all Clarke can do is shrug and tell him she’s not well. A well placed lie that’s slowly becoming more and more questionable. 

Never in her life did she think her own mother would reject her position. She’s unreachable—when she tries to go to her chambers, her mothers servants tell Clarke she’s not there. She knows it’s a lie, but she’s not going to insist on going in—if her mother doesn’t want to see her then she won’t force her. The rejection hurts, and even if Clarke doesn’t understand it, she has much more demanding problems.

A little body crashes into her legs and arms wrap around her knees. Clarke looks down in surprise to see Madi grinning up at her, blue eyes lit up in delight.

“Hello Madi.” Clarke smiles, crouching down to her level. She feels Bellamy’s eyes on her curiously. Madi throws her arms around her shoulders, hugging her close. Clarke has missed this. As a princess she had more freedom, more time for her people. Now she feels as though she’s painfully neglecting them.

“Hi.” Madi grins back, finally pulling away. “I’m having so much fun, Gaia let us play on our own but I wanted to come find you. I miss you.”

“I miss you too,” Clarke laughs, “but I’m busy now, making sure you’re safe.” She taps Madi’s nose, and she laughs in glee.

“You should just send Gaia to the people trying to start a war, she’s really scary.” Madi screws up her nose, and while Clarke tries her hardest not to laugh, Bellamy openly snorts. Madi suddenly blushes, as if she hadn’t noticed Bellamy was there.

“That’s not very nice, Madi,” Clarke tries to admonish her, but it doesn’t work, especially considering it’s true. How easy life would be if she could just send Gaia to the border with her group of unruly orphans—that would send an army running in no time. 

Madi mumbles an insincere apology, but it’s the best that Clarke’s going to get out of her. She soon lights up again when she notices the flowers in her hair. “You look pretty today. Your hairs different.”

“I’m the Queen now, I think I can have pretty hair for a celebration.”

Madi pouts. “I want pretty hair.”

“You can.” Bellamy’s crouching down next to her, stray flowers in hand. He threads them through her unruly dark hair. She positively beams at him, staring at him in pure admiration.

“There,” he smiles softly, “now you look just like a Queen too.” Madi blushes and looks at Clarke shyly. 

“Say thank you to Bellamy, Madi,” Clarke says pointedly. Madi looks away and mumbles her thanks. Bellamy just grins back. The moment feels painfully domesticated—her and Bellamy putting flowers in Madi’s hair, and the way Madi looks at him makes Clarkes heart soar. 

Once Madi goes off to find her friends before she gets in trouble, Bellamy extends his hand to help her up, but doesn’t let go once she’s standing next to him. He rubs his thumb over her knuckles, the intenseness of his stare makes her look away. She’s seen that look before—it was how her father would look at her mother, it’s how newly weds look at each other, it's how she never thought she would be looked at.

“She was certainly taken with you,” Bellamy murmurs quietly, even with the sounds of the celebrations, she can still hear him like they’re the only two there. 

“I’d say she was more taken with you, I’m old news now.” His stare doesn’t let up, and there’s an element of curiosity there now. “She’s from the orphanage, her parents died in a fire a few years ago. I used to go to the orphanage a lot—we’ve got a bond, Madi and I. I don’t get to go as much as I used to. I miss it.”

He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, just gazes at her with an intense sadness that she isn’t used to. She gives a half hearted shrug, assuring him that it’s alright—it happens.

She leads the way to one of the stages, trying to blend in with the crowds but it’s impossible. Of course people know who she is, she should know better than to think she can go unrecognised. 

At least they get the best seats for the performances. Clarke’s pleasantly surprised by how good it actually is, perhaps she didn't give them as much credit as they were due. She watches Bellamy closely though. She doesn’t think they have these kinds of festivals in Sparta and she wonders what he thinks of it all, whether he appreciates the arts and fun of the festivities or if he thinks they’re silly. His face doesn’t give much away though, she must remember to ask him later.

One of the warriors he’s training, Jasper, comes and sits next to him, talking animatedly to Bellamy. To her surprise, he talks back more civilly than she expected him to. Although she’s never seen him in training, and Kane doesn't give much away to her, she imagined him to be strict and disciplined with the soldiers—much like Kane is, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. 

She’s seen it a few times today though, how people smile at him with familiarity, and how he nods back, almost a hint of a smile there. It hits her now that he’s been accepted as part of Arcadia, her people don’t see him as Spartan anymore. The thought warms her heart. 

“Raven wants you to stage some unfortunate but fatal accident for him during one of your training sessions,” she murmurs to Bellamy once Jaspers moves on. 

He snorts and shakes his head at her. “He’s not that bad. He’s been my biggest challenge actually, trying to discipline him. Maybe if she’d asked when I first started I would have been more than happy to oblige.”

“I’m glad to hear it—that he’s a better soldier, not that you were thinking about killing off my army.”

It draws a laugh from him, and she can't help but join in. They join in with the applause at the end of the performance, though she has to admit she was watching her husband more than what was happening on the stage. 

They make their way over to the other stage, Clarke supposes they had better at least make an appearance for some of the performances going on. They’re sat at the front again, not thinking too much about Bellamy playing with her hand as he sits next to her. 

“So, they do let you out of the parliament building then,” Cillian says suddenly—she hadn’t realised he’d snuck up next to her. Had her life gone slightly differently, had her father not died an untimely death and she had not decided to take over his reign, maybe something would have happened between them. 

But her life did go that way and now she’s the Queen and sat with her husband, with no thoughts of Cillian for a long time. 

“Occasionally they do,” Clarke smiles tightly, “only for special occasions though.”

Cillian laughs and Clarke’s not really sure what she’s supposed to say here. Bellamy’s stiffened next to her, picking up that something changed with her. 

“This is my husband, Bellamy,” Clarke introduces in a hurry, desperate to break some of the tension. “Bellamy, this is one our Healers, Cillian.”

They nod at each other tersely, sizing one another up. Clarke’s grateful when the performance starts. Bellamy keeps looking around her to glare at Cillian, it takes her a moment to realise that he’s jealous. 

The thought makes her smile more than it should. She doesn’t say anything yet though and once the performance ends, they part ways with Cillian. Clarke’s still grinning like a fool. 

“What?” Bellamy frowns. “The performance wasn’t  _ that _ funny, I’d say they were mediocre at best.”

“Not that, you. You’re jealous of Cillian.”

His jaw tightens and he looks back to the way Cillian had gone. “I don’t like the way he was looking at you.”

“How was he looking at me?” Clarke simpers, knowing full well what he’s talking about. She enjoys the way his eyes narrow and how he holds her hand a little tighter, stands a little closer to her—letting everyone know that she’s his. 

“Like you belong to him.” He steps closer to her, his lips grazing her ear. “And you don’t. You’re mine, and only mine.”

There's electricity between them, and suddenly she’s cursing her role she has to play today. If it were up to her they’d drop everything and go back to their chambers right this second, but they can’t.

“You’ll have to show me later,” she murmurs with a smirk. Bellamy squeezes her hand and presses a chaste kiss to her lips—nowhere near enough to satisfy either of them, but they’re in public and they have an image to uphold. She waits for his retort, but something—or rather, someone catches her eye over his shoulder, standing in the shadows of a building shroud in a cloak. She’d know them anywhere, her Thanatos—they bring bad news and leave her desecrate in the aftermath. 

“Clarke.” Bellamy squeezes her hand, pulling her gaze away from the figure. When she looks back, they’re gone, but that’s how they work. “You alright? You went somewhere just then.”

Clarke blinks, shaking away the bad thoughts. There’s no point dwelling on them until night falls and the celebrations are well and truly over. Only then will they come. 

“Fine, I was just thinking and got lost for a minute, sorry. Shall we carry on?”

Bellamy gives her an appraising look before nodding, dropping her hand and they walk back into the crowd.

There’s performances that she can’t keep track of—she’s aware that something’s happening by the actors on the stage and the audience gasping and laughing. She claps at the right time at least, standing with Bellamy and the rest of the audience. She plays the good Queen and talks with her citizens, smiles when she’s supposed to and laughs when it’s expected of her, but all the time she’s looking over shoulder, waiting for him to appear again. 

They make it back to their chambers well after the moon’s reached its highest point, the celebrations have finished and stools are being packed away. 

Bellamy kisses her shoulder from behind and tugs the straps of her tunic down. She’s given the servants the day off to join in with the celebrations and it's not like she needs them here. His hands trail to her breasts when her tunic drops to the floor, his lips find the pulse point on her neck and she wills herself to just relax. 

“What’s wrong?” he murmurs, sending sweet vibrations down her throat.

“Nothing,” she assures him, turning in his hold. “Just, kiss me.”

“As my Queen wishes.” There’s a hint of a smirk there—he enjoys it, worshipping her. She enjoys being worshipped too, so it’s a fair deal. “I think,” he murmurs against her lips, “I promised to show you that you’re mine.”

Want floods her, all thoughts of what’s to come later leave her mind, she focuses instead on the rough hand gripping her breast and her body responding to his touch. She’s standing naked and wet in front of him, ready to show him that she’s his and no one else's. 

His lips are rough and demanding against hers as his hand snakes between them and he presses his finger against her clit. She whimpers and clings to him, but it’s not enough—she needs more.

“Please,” she gasps. His fingers are moving too slowly, but he knows what he’s doing, driving her crazy like this. 

“Tell me,” he demands sharply, she can hear the desire in his voice. “Tell me what you want.”

“You. I only want you.”

He walks her backward until her legs hit the edge of the bed. She sits slowly, her lips not leaving his. Bellamy pushes her back gently, it’s all that’s needed for her to lie back. He watches her with dark eyes as he pushes a finger inside of her. She’s ready for him, has been for a long time but she knows he’s going to take his time.

“Good girl,” he murmurs when she gasps and bucks her hips to meet the rhythm of his finger. He’s going to push her over the edge before he’s even undressed. Another finger pushes into her, stretching her perfectly and setting a relentless pace. 

“Mine,” he growls. She’s so close, cunt throbbing in need. “Tell me you’re mine.”

“I’m yours,” she moans, “only yours.”

She may rule a kingdom, makes the rules and demands respect, but in their chambers she’s putty in his hands, answering to no one but him. 

He pushes her over the edge when his free hand pinches her pebbled nipple, twisting it harshly—finally waves of pleasure overcome her, her back arching into her orgasm. There’s no time to come down from it though as Bellamy pulls his hands away and pulls his tunic up. He’s hard and ready for her, and wastes no time in pushing into her, stretching her more than his fingers did. 

“You’re so good for me,” he pants. He’s not gentle with her, not anymore and especially not tonight. His pace is relentless, roughly snapping his hips against hers. He pauses briefly and Clarke’s about to complain when he grabs her legs and pulls them over his shoulders. The angle’s almost too much, he thrusts deeper this way. She moans loudly, shamelessly, knowing the guards are right outside the door.

That’s what he wants—for Arcadia to hear him fucking her, leaving his mark on her and demanding they know that she’s his. 

She wonders how she ever lived without him. Did she ever realise what she was missing without him in her life? His thumb rubs her clit and she cries out once more, desperate for the second wave of pleasure that she knows is imminent. 

“Come for me,” he orders, “show me who you belong to.”

She’s powerless but to do as he asks, letting her orgasm take over as he twitches inside her, dragging out the last few harsh thrusts until he spills inside of her, making his mark inside her. 

He collapses on top of her finally, nuzzling into her neck. “I’ll clean you up,” he promises, “just, I need a second.”

She kisses his hair—she’s dangerously close to falling in love.

*

When Bellamy’s sated and asleep and the world has gone quiet outside, she slips out of bed quietly and pulls her tunic on and a cloak over it, sneaking out into the night to where  _ he’s _ waiting. 

He’s waiting exactly where she knew he would be. Pressed into the shadows of the night, hood over his face so not to be recognised. She steps into the shadows, disguising herself too. Despite her ruling there are many who would see her brought down if they had the opportunity. 

She pulls down her hood, expecting him to do the same. “You bring news?” she demands. 

Murphy drops his hood with a smirk and a judging glance. “Don’t I always?”

Murphy has acquired the skill of survival over the years—he knows how to be useful and he’ll never be killed for it, though many would like to see his head on a spike. Clarke may be included with them, but he serves a purpose and she won’t forget that. 

“I’ll give you credit where it’s due, your highness, you know how to throw a party.”

Clarke rolls her eyes, she has no time for his games. “That we do. What do you want?”

Murphy clicks his tongue at her, looking around leisurely at the barren streets. “Can’t I just come and bring you information?”

“Because that’s not how this works—those are your terms, not mine.”

Murphy shrugs nonchalantly, he knows how to wind her up, he’s well versed in it after all these years. Even before she was Queen he'd bring her information—whisper it in her ears at parties, slip notes over a wine cup. She knows this dance. 

“How’s my boy Bellamy doing? Settling well into married life, I assume.”

“He’s fine,” she spits through gritted teeth. 

“Good, good. I trust it will stay that way, Pike wouldn’t react well to his General not being treated well.”

Clarke gives him an even stare. “He’s not Pike’s General—not anymore. He’s my husband, Pike has no say in his well being anymore.”

Murphy’s jaw tightens—the news is about Pike, she knows it now. “Gold coins, getting here isn’t cheap and I’m not sure you’re worth the risk.”

She’s prepared for this, so she tosses him the coin bag from under her cloak. He catches it easily and inspects its contents. 

“Very good,” he smirks. “You have a rat in your midst, somebody's feeding Pike your battle plans.”

“I don’t have battle plans” she all but growls. It doesn’t faze Murphy—nothing does. 

“Fine, contingency plans, then, if you’re going to be difficult about it. Either way, Pike knows about them.”

Clarke grits her teeth. She knew this was a possibility, she knew there were council members who didn’t agree with her ruling, but to put all of Arcadia at risk just to spite her is unforgivable. Never did she ever think that she would have a traitor so brazen they would put the entirety of Arcadia at risk. 

“Who?” she demands with ice in her heart. Whoever the traitor is will pay with their life. She has tried to be a fair ruler, she tries to give people the benefit of the doubt but this is unforgivable.

Murphy just tuts at her and shakes his head, even in the dark she can see the glimmer in his eyes. “Now now, you know that information is going to cost you.”

Of course it is, why would she expect anything less? “I won’t send your head back to Sparta on a spike.”

Murphy seems to accept that offer, a wise move on his part. “Your favourite General.” He grins in mirth at her shock of the revelation. “Kane’s loose lips want to sink more than ships.”

Dread sinks in and turns her blood to fire. Her own trusted adviser, the one person she is supposed to trust and he’s sending information to the nation that wanted to burn them to the ground not even a few months ago. An example would be made of him, she’ll have to. 

“A word of advice, I’d keep the information close to your chest—play it to your advantage,” Murphy suggests. Her first instinct is to tell him where he can stick his advice, but there’s a rational, more logical part of her that knows she can use this to her advantage. She can catch him and Sparta, let them fall short. 

“Is Sparta planning on breaking their peace treaty?” she demands, her contingency plans already running through her mind. She never thought she'd be using them this early—she’d hoped she’d never have to, but that was wishful thinking on her behalf. 

“I have it on good authority that Pike has sought advice from the Oracle of Delphi.” Clarke’s heart sinks. If the high priestesses tell Pike to go to war, then war will soon be upon them. Clarke tries her best not to panic, but that’s difficult when she has an unprepared army and a rebellious council. “Pike’s been keeping it under wraps, but I think he’ll get his war.”

There’s a heavy pause while Murphy watches her critically, waiting for her to break. 

“Your council makes you out to be blood-thirsty, yet you claim to want peace. Still you have an army and war plans—you can’t have it both ways.” Murphy always knows where to hit her the hardest.

“I can aim for peace and protect my land. I won’t be defeated because of others' desire for my head.”

A slow smirk rises on Murphy's lips. “Very good.”

She swallows hard, fighting back a swarm of emotions. “You’ve been a great help, Murphy. Your information is appreciated.”

Murphy smirks and tips his head. “Anything to keep my head on my shoulders. Tell your husband I said hello—on second thoughts, probably best you don’t, actually.”

She doesn’t comment, just turns on her heel and walks into the night. 

In the morning, she can’t bear to face her council—there’s one known traitor, but she very much doubts it stops there. She has to make a plan, she has to figure out how to use this to her advantage, but worst of all she has to bear it alone. It’s a tremendous weight to have on her shoulder and once again she feels as though the world is trying to tear her down for simply existing.

Though logically she knows it’s much more than that, she knows it’s more than her gender too. It’s her desperation for peace and her determination to get there. She won’t stop at anything to bring her people peace and if that means Sparta goes down, then so be it. 

She doesn’t open her eyes when Bellamy gets out of bed and dresses for training, a part of her wants to tell him, a part of her needs to tell him—he is in charge of her army, after all. But that runs the risk of Kane finding out and she won’t have that. He kisses her head before he leaves and she wants to cry. 

She stays there, thinking of how it's so unlike her to not have the motivation to get out of bed and lead like she’s supposed to.

“Oh,” comes a surprised voice from the doorway. She doesn’t turn to look at who it is, she knows it will be one of the servants come to clean the room. Maybe they’re a traitor too, after all, it was Kane's doing, hiring the servants. How is she to know if they’re not here to gain information. “Sorry, I didn’t realise you were still in here your majesty, you’re usually up before the sun.”

“I am.” Clarke sighs, rolling to stare at the ceiling. Maybe she’s being dramatic, it’s likely, but is she not allowed to take a day to act her age? After all, her friends are courting and marrying and having fun. She knew that this is her own doing—she had asked for this role and she knew the responsibility it would carry, but she wants one day to process it.

“I don’t think I’m well,” she tells them, an excuse for her still being in bed. The sun is well past its highest point, she shouldn’t still be lying here in pity.

“Perhaps a bath,” the servant suggests, “to make you feel better.”

Perhaps that is what she needs, perhaps she needs time to relax and clear her mind. She sits up and looks at the servant. She’s young and timid, probably fresh from her schooling and sees this as an honour, serving the Queen of Arcadia.

She wishes that it wasn’t. She’s happy to take the responsibility, but not the special attention it brings.

“Yes,” Clarke nods, “I think that might be best.”

It takes several servants to bring in the tub and fill it with water and oils that smell like the flowers on the mountainside she used to play in as a child. Her father would take her and Wells in the late afternoon, when the sun was low and they’d run as far as they would until they’d collapse on the grass in a fit of giggles. The petals float on the water now, torn from their stem and left to wither away. She knows the feeling all too well.

Her chambers smell like nostalgia by the times she gets into the tub. The water’s lukewarm, just cool enough to calm her clammy skin and erratic heart. She sighs and sinks down, letting her hair fall over the edge and her face submerge in the water. The servant from before brushes out the knots in her hair, tangled from sleeping in her braids from the celebrations that already feel like a lifetime ago. 

She tries her hardest to clear her mind, but still, there’s a million things there—plans to make and revenge to take. She doesn’t want to be vengeful, though. She doesn’t want to be put in that position. Her traitorous council has too much to answer for, but first, she needs answers. 

The door opens and takes her by surprise, too caught up in her own thoughts to be paying attention to her surroundings. Bellamy looks on in confusion. She doesn’t know if he’s back early, or if she really has wasted an entire day in self-pity. 

“You can go,” Bellamy tells the servant evenly, “I’d like some time alone with my wife.” 

She stands and curtsies to both of them and walks out the room with her head ducked down. Bellamy kneels next to the tub and brushes a strand of hair from her face. His eyes are softer than she ever thought possible, his thumb glides over her cheek – she can’t bring herself to smile. 

“Kane said you weren't in the council meeting, I was worried about you.” 

She could confess now, her secret meetings with Murphy, Kanes betrayal, the impending war. But she doesn’t, she can’t bring herself to say it out loud. Maybe if she doesn’t say it, it won’t be real. 

Sparta’s army is real though, as is the threat they pose. Where will her husband's loyalties lie when his homeland comes and attacks? His heart surely cannot lie here, when his entire life has been spent with the warriors he’ll be expected to fight against. Where does that leave her? Does she execute him as a traitor or let him go?

She’ll cross that bridge when she comes to it.

“What’s wrong?” he asks so softly, it’s almost not him – or at least the man she’s come to know. 

She can wish for nothing more than to make a confession, but she won’t. “I’m fine, I just needed to relax.”

“While I agree you need to relax, you’re not fine. Someone who’s fine wouldn’t have worry lines right here.” His fingers smooth out the creases on her forehead, and finally, she allows herself to smile. “Talk to me, I’m your husband. I’m here to ease the burden, you shouldn’t be facing your problems alone.”

She takes a moment to think over how much to tell him, but he’s right—she can’t keep her problems in forever, but there’s only so much she can tell him. 

“I think I have a traitor in my council,” she whispers, watching carefully for his reaction. His breath hitches and his eyes widen, fingers taking pause on her forehead. The look of shock is clear, but there’s something else there she can’t quite figure out, something that flashes over his features so quickly she almost misses it.

“Who?” he demands quietly, dark eyes hard.

“I don’t know,” she lies easily—too easily for comfort. “Someone with access to my battle plans.”

“I’m sorry.” His fingers move to her hair, brushing through the freshly untangled waves. “How can I help?”

It’s sweet that he wants to help, but she’s not sure how he can. She doesn’t want to frighten him or test his loyalties by telling him about the impending war. The council won’t let a Spartan warrior near the battle plans, some aren’t happy that he’s training their army—but that’s Kane’s doing, putting Bellamy in the army. She was against it too at the time, briefly. She had asked herself why he wanted a Spartan warrior in charge of training her army, but Kane had his reasons, and who was she to question her General's opinions when it came to her army? 

“Take care of me, just for tonight?” She feels weak at the vulnerability of being asked to be taken care of. She always held the belief that she would never need to rely on another person. But she needs him.

He smiles tenderly, a look she never thought she would see when she first met him—a cold, hard Spartan warrior through and through. “You don’t have to ask, I’ll always take care of you.”

He moves so he’s kneeling behind her and tips the sweet-smelling oil onto his hands, massaging it into her scalp. She finally lets herself relax, and though she won’t be at peace for a long time yet, this is the closest she’s going to get for a while.

Her headache and the tension in her shoulders melt away when he touches her. She dares to think he may have come from the gods themselves. 

“I’ve never seen hair this light before,” he murmurs, “or eyes quite so blue.”

“I’m no stranger to arranged marriages—my mother’s from far north where it’s colder, apparently lots of people there look like me there.”

“Are they all as beautiful as you? I somehow doubt it.”

She laughs and shakes her head. “You don’t have to sweet talk me, we’re already married.”

He leans over her to kiss the tip of her nose. “Then let me say something nice about my wife.”

“I won’t deny you that,” she whispers with a grin. For just this moment, she can pretend that life is always this way—that she’s young and carefree, not bearing the weight of a nation on her shoulders. 

With a gentle grasp, he picks up her hand and kisses her palm softly, then wrinkles his nose. “Your fingers look like dates.”

Clarke laughs and pulls her hand away. He grins cheekily at her, but she takes it as a sign that it’s time to get out of the water and stop stewing in her self pity. Bellamy helps her out of the tub and wraps her in a cotton robe, drying her pruned skin.

With a gentle hand, Bellamy cups her cheek and presses his lips to hers softly, letting all of her worries melt away. “Lie down,” he murmurs, squeezing her shoulders. 

She lies back on the bed, settling down as Bellamy pours oil into his palm and spreads it over her skin. He starts at her feet, pressing his thumb into her muscles and working the tension out of her body as he works his way up her legs, over her stomach and breasts.

“Turn over,” he whispers, briefly breaking the much-desired silence of her mind. She happily obliges though, shrugging out of the open robe and turns onto her stomach. She’s never let herself be vulnerable like this, she never thought she would ever need to. But she’s beginning to see what she’s been missing. She’s never really felt loved before—expected of, yes. Sometimes even respected, but not loved like this. He works the knots out of her shoulders, asking nothing in return but for her to just relax.

Despite her council turning against her, despite the traitors and the impending war, for the first time in her life, she lets herself forget, just for a moment, and lets herself be in the moment with Bellamy. Even if Pike is planning an attack and using Kane to get to her, she still has Bellamy.

***

Clarke’s been tense for several nights now. Most nights Bellamy finds her on the balcony, sitting lost in her own mind with a frightening, steely gaze in her eyes. 

For the first time since he got here, he’s afraid. Afraid of being caught, afraid that he’s being double-crossed by his wife, by the General, maybe even by one of the soldiers.

He’s afraid that Clarke truly doesn’t know that he’s a traitor, and his betrayal is going to break her heart. Clarke knows that there’s a traitor in the council and while he’s not on the council, and he doesn’t know her battle plan, he’s more than an easy target to pin this on by the real traitor. 

_ Real traitor, _ he thinks with a scoff. When did he stop being the real traitor? Sometime after the Festival of Dionysus when he’d seen Clarke with Madi, or when he was no longer referred to as the Queen's husband, but respected in his own right. Things are different here, the soldiers he trains speak to him as an equal, and while in Sparta they wouldn’t do that, here he tentatively treats them as equals.

It’s a foreign feeling for a foreign land, but now he wonders how he ever coped back in Sparta. In his regimented ways and strict life there was no freedom, no time for joy, no one would laugh with him, but here they do. 

His notes have changed too. The information he passes on to Murphy is vague, filled with half-truths and subtle lies. If anybody’s noticed, they don’t say anything. Cautiously he thinks he may have gotten away with it. 

Somethings changed with Kane, too. He’s tense—tenser than usual anyway. He comes back from council meetings red-faced and terse. He wonders what it must be like in there, now that Clarke suspects that there’s a traitor. Not pleasant, if the meetings were ever pleasant in the first place. It’s the one thing he doesn’t miss about Sparta—the battle plans and the long meetings, the casual way Pike spoke of attacking other nations. 

He sees it clearly now, how the narrative against Clarke worked in everybody's favours. She’s a strong, capable leader who won’t stand down to pressure. Without her, Arcadia is weak—so to kill her as a villain would mean Arcadia is free for the taking.

That night he waits up, determined to find out information. Not for Pike, but for himself. Even if she doesn’t suspect he’s the traitor, he needs to know who she thinks it is—he has to help her in some way.

But she’s late, even by her standards. The moon reaches its highest point and passes it as he sits on the balcony and waits it out. But she doesn’t come, and there’s concern rooted deep within him. Hastily he stands and makes his way to the building far north of the city, nestled among the mountainside where Clarke holds her council meetings. 

It’s lit up by dim candlelight, his footsteps echo as he walks towards the hall, but the sounds are drowned out by the shouting. He can make out Clarke’s voice anywhere. He doesn’t need to guess that as he’d heard the angry shouts enough times when they first married. 

But he’s surprised by Kane's voice shouting back. He’s always been the quiet angry type—on the training grounds, all he has to do is give a disapproving stare and the entire Army is quaking. 

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Clarke snaps, her shouts ricochet off the walls as her palms slap hard on the table covered in maps and scrolls. It doesn’t faze Kane, or at least it doesn’t appear to from where Bellamy’s standing, unnoticed in the doorway.

“They are not going to attack from the North,” Kane snarls back, venom in his dark eyes—a look Bellamy doesn’t like being aimed at his wife. “There’s no way to get to the north without us noticing. They’ll attack through Tegea, so stationing the army north is pointless.”

Bellamy frowns. There was a conversation in a dark room much like this one that he can recall, late-night battle plans with Pike being made. If Sparta were to attack Arcadia, and at the time of making the plans, it was likely they would take Tegea as their own and use it as Kleros. Tegea was the more peaceful side of Arcadia, the weaker side. 

Sparta was breaking the peace treaty. War is soon upon them.

“You’re not in charge, I am. The army goes where I say it goes,” Clarke growls back, leaning forward over the table and leaving no room for argument. But Kane is right, stationing the army at the northern end of the city leaves Tegea wide open for attack and Clarkes not stupid. She knows her way around the battle plans—she was raised by them.

She thinks Kane is the traitor. Briefly, he wonders if she came to that conclusion alone, or if somebody had told her—but who? The council seemed more on Kane’s side than her own, so someone was double-crossing somewhere.

“Listen, child,” Kane spits. “I have sat and listened quietly to every stupid move you have tried to take, but you’re asking for defeat—you’ll be a prisoner of war soon enough.”

“That is no way to speak to your Queen.” Bellamy finally announces his presence. There’s a gleam in Kane's eye that he doesn’t like, and that he certainly doesn’t want to be aimed at Clarke. 

Both turn in surprise at the interruption, not expecting to see him there at night. Is this what goes on when the rest of the council have left? Or is this what it’s like when they’re here too. It’s no wonder he finds Clarke so tense and upset at night. If anybody had dared to speak to Pike that way their head would be off their shoulders before they could finish their sentence. 

Kane’s jaw tightens, but he takes a step back and away from Clarke. 

“Bellamy,” he greets cooly, “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Well, when my wife wasn’t back when it’s almost sunrise I got worried. It looks like I had the right to be, too.”

Kane gives him a suspicious look over, and Bellamy’s starkly reminded that they’re both traitors here, Bellamy’s walking a dangerously thin line by being here—and Kane’s treading thin too by the sounds of things. 

“What goes on in the council rooms has nothing to do with you. Your place is on the battlefield, not dictating the affairs of the city.” Kane glares.

“It is not your place to dictate who comes and goes from the council rooms, General,” Clarke finally speaks up, voice even and laced with venom. “You may take your leave.”

“Your majesty–”

“I said leave.” Clarke’s tone leaves no room for argument. Kane nods after a heavy pause, throwing a glare towards Bellamy on his way out. Clarke deflates back into her chair, sighing heavily. 

“You think Kane’s the traitor,” he states. He doesn’t need to ask, he already knows. There might be a hint of a smile on Clarke’s lips, it's hard to tell in the dim light.

“I suspect,” she corrects, but somehow he suspects “but I can't be too careful, not with any of my council members—not anymore. If I try to feed them false battle plans I may have a chance of taking the enemy by surprise, but I may be causing myself more headache than it’s worth.”

He nods and lets it sink in, wondering if she tells anybody of her true plans. But if her own General is being told lies, who commands the army when the time of war comes? Him? Would she trust him to do that? Would she expect him to fight as an Arcadian against his homeland?

Yes, he suspects she would. 

“Come, it’s late and you barely sleep anymore. I think it’s time we went home.”

“Home.” She smiles softly, rounding the table to him. “Let's go home.”

With one last glance at the botched battle plans, they leave the council room, and he leaves any information in his mind behind.

*

The next day, he’s left in charge of the training session. Kane’s nowhere to be seen and Bellamy wonders if Clarke lost her temper and cut off his head—though he assumes Jasper would be shouting about that if it were the case.

He’s tougher on the soldiers now. He didn’t ask Clarke about Sparta breaking the peace treaty, it was never real to begin with. Maybe she knows that, maybe she doesn’t—only time will tell.

Clarke’s not in their chambers when he gets home, but Kane is.

“Bellamy.” Kane nods as walks through the door, the servants standing outside with their heads down, obviously with strict instructions from the General not to come in. “I was expecting Clarke.”

“You should know by now that she doesn’t come home until well into the night.” 

“She said she was coming home early tonight. Doesn’t matter though, all I came to say is that Athens sent a present, to celebrate the new peace treaty.” He nods to the table in the corner with a bottle of wine on it, not the usual ones he sees around here. “Can you make sure Clarke gets it, please? I know she’s fond of her wine.”

“Of course,” Bellamy agrees tersely with a stiff nod, Kane turns on his heel and leaves, no mention of the night before or not being at practice. It’s a relief though as it’s not a conversation he wants to have with him. 

He inspects the bottle, but he’s not one for the expensive wine leaders seem to drink, it seems richer here too, and goes to his head, making him tired. A warrior should never leave themselves vulnerable like that.

True to Kane’s word, Clarke walks through the door before the sun has even set—it’s a welcome surprise.

“I thought maybe I needed some cooling off time,” she explains with a smile, kissing his cheek in greeting. 

“I don’t think cooling off time involves going straight back to work, but I’m happy you’re home early. It gets boring eating meals by myself all the time.”

Clarke winces, he didn’t mean it as a dig or an insult, he knows now more than ever the challenges she faces and how hard she works. He can deal with eating meals alone, it’s not like he came to Arcadia for the company. 

He tries not to think too hard about why he came here.

“Oh, before I forget, Kane said Athens sent some wine as a celebration for the peace treaty or something,” he tells her. She cocks her head in momentary confusion and walks to the table where the wine sits. 

“I didn’t think Athens had signed the peace treaty yet.” She frowns, inspecting the bottle. “But if this means they will, then I’ll drink to that—do you want some?”

“No, I’m not really one for wine.” He shrugs.

“More for me then.” She pours herself a cup as the food is brought in, setting it at the table on the balcony. 

It’s nice, sitting with her at sunset—it feels normal and domesticated. In another life this could have been them, they could have had a normal marriage and a normal life.

In another life, he wouldn’t be betraying her. 

The sun sinks and sets the sky ablaze, she’s radiant in this light, even more so than she usually is. It hits him then—he loves her, more than he’s ever loved anyone in his life. The thought throws him for a second. This isn’t what he came here for—he swore he’d keep his distance, but somewhere along the way, between her kindness and softness, between battle plans and tangled sheets in the middle of the night he’s fallen in love.

It makes him want to burn the notes he’s kept stashed away, even if most of them contain lies. If she finds them, no matter what the notes say she’ll make an example of him for sure. He can see it now, his and Kane's heads on spikes side by side, a warning to others of what happens when you betray the Queen. 

If Pike finds out the information he’s feeding him is lies, he’ll do the same. 

When did love make him so foolish?

He looks to her, not sure what to say. Should he make a declaration of love, or leave it inside? The decision’s made for him though when she winces and rubs her head.

“What’s wrong?” He frowns. She’s gone pale and there’s a sheen of sweat over her face. “Clarke?”

“I don’t feel good,” she murmurs, standing suddenly and stumbling to the front of the balcony. She gasps shaky breaths and he’s about to stand, to go to her when the first arrow flies towards then and embeds itself in her shoulder. Blood blooms over her tunic, she can’t even move out of the way of the next arrow, and he’s not quick enough to grab her. 

The second arrow lands just below her collarbone and he’s finally able to pull her back through the doors and behind the wall for safety. Arrows still fly into the room, but there’s no real target now that Clarke’s gone—they’re taking shots in the dark and hoping they hit something.

He cradles her in his arms, holding her up as she sways unsteadily against him. When the arrows finally stop, he picks her up and lays her on the bed, shouting for the guards.

“I’ve got you,” he promises, pressing his hands over the wounds around the arrows protruding from her skin grotesquely. She whimpers and winces, blood flows hot over his hands, he was always taught to hold down the wound, and if it was another soldier on the battlefield he wouldn't give them wincing another thought. But he can’t stand it when it’s his wife in pain, when she hasn’t done anything to deserve this. “I’m sorry, I’ve got you.”

She doesn’t answer, her skin is clammy and the blood's flowing from wounds too fast. He can’t slow the bleeding and the guards still aren’t here.

“Guards!” he shouts again, so powerful his voice cracks. “Stay with me, promise me you’ll stay with me.”

She nods jerkily, the top of her tunic more red than white now. The guards finally burst in, taking in the scene with horror. 

“Where the hell were you?” he snarls “Get the healer, now before she bleeds out.”

They rush from the room, not hanging around to ask any questions—a smart move on their part. 

“Bellamy,'' she whimpers, hand reaching out to him. He can’t think straight—all of his training, years of being taught to keep a clear head in dangerous situations has gone out the window while she’s laying in front of him so fragile and weak.

“I’m here,” he promises. “I’m not going anywhere.”

It feels like a lifetime before the healer comes in, followed by a woman he’s never seen before, but she’s wide-eyed and frantic as she takes in Clarke’s appearance. She tries to push him aside, but he’s not leaving Clarke—not now, not ever.

He does, however, need to move for the healer, as much as it pains him to do so. When he takes his hands away for the healer to take over, blood drips from them onto the stone floor. It’s a vision he knows he’ll never be able to get out of his head. 

“Mom,” Clarke whimpers and Bellamy turns in surprise to the woman kneeling beside him over Clarke. This is the infamous woman that has kept hidden away, with rumours swirling about her distrust for her own daughter. Usually, Bellamy wouldn’t have paid attention to idle gossip, but when she didn’t turn up to her only daughter's wedding or the city's celebrations, he couldn’t help but wonder if there’s some truth there. 

“Oh, sweetheart,” Abby sighs, brushing Clarke’s hair back from her clammy skin. “Don’t worry, I’m here.”

“Get the council,” Clarke demands weakly, “station the guards to Tegea–”

“Clarke stop, Let Kane deal with it, you’re injured,” Abby instructs, but Clarke just shakes her head.

“Not Kane, he’s–”

“Away from the bed,” the healer snaps, ripping the shoulder of Clarke’s tunic to get to the arrows. Bellamy takes a reluctant step back, but her eyes immediately find his. His hands are covered with her blood, but in one way or another, this was always going to be how it ended.

“Stay,” she pleads quietly, a tear falling down her pale cheek. “Please.”

How could he ever deny her anything? Especially when she’s lying covered in blood and he doesn’t know if it’s his doing. He rounds the bed and sits softly next to her, taking her good hand and squeezing reassuringly. She smiles shakily, but it contorts with pain when the healer pulls out the first arrow.

He doesn’t think he can bear it, but he has to. Blood pours down her chest and arms, the healer shoves a cloth at him and tells him to cover the wound. There’s a strong smell that Bellamy knows all too well from battle wounds. With no warning a blade’s put over a flame, heating it until it’s white-hot and unceremoniously pressed to the first wound. Clarke grits her teeth but doesn’t cry out or scream—he’s seen warriors with worse reactions.

He lets her squeeze his hand as tight as she can—it’s nothing compared to the pain she must be feeling. The second arrow is pulled out and another tear falls down her cheek that he brushes away with a bloody thumb, the colour stark against her clammy skin.

He hates the smell of burning flesh and blood—it's one he’s all too used to, though he hopes to never have to smell it again. The sound’s much worse though, the sizzle of the wounds closing and the whimpers that fall from Clarke’s lips.

Kane barges in then, picking up an arrow and inspecting it.

“What’s going on?” he demands, taking in the scene around him. “The guards told me Clarke was injured.”

“Injured?” Bellamy snarls. “She was shot at when she could barely stand after drinking the wine you left.”

If Kane must not have thought of him as perceptive—that was his mistake. Bellamy may not say much, but he sees and hears everything. It may be laziness on Kane’s part, but he doubts it. His guess is he told him just enough information to take back to Pike to pin the betrayal on him. He knows his game, he’s figured him out.

“That wine was nothing to do with me,” Kane tells him evenly. “It was a gift from Athens”

“Athens who haven’t sealed the peace treaty yet.”

Bellamy will give Kane credit where it’s due, he keeps his cool well under pressure. He doesn’t balk or refute the statement, just stares coldly through him with dark, dead eyes.

“How dare you question the General?” Abby seethes in anger. “Who are you to speak to your superiors in that way?”

“I’m not questioning anything, I’m telling you the facts. If they make you angry, maybe you should consider why,” he snaps back, anger rising under his skin.

He knows this is Kane and he knows that Clarke knows too, by the way she’s silently glaring at him from across the room.

“You’re the General,” Clarke spits suddenly, “so what are you doing here when we’re under attack? You should be securing the borders.”

Kane puts his hand up to silence her, then quickly drops it when he sees the look on Clarke’s face. “It’s already done,” he assures her. “But there’s no sign of an army, there doesn’t appear to be an immediate threat.”

She sits up with a pained wince. “Then find whoever shot me and bring me their head.”

Abby huffs and Bellamy watches with a quiet fascination. Gone is the concerned façade, the tender, motherly love. Now, Abby’s watching Clarke with disdain, standing closer and closer to Kane. He has to wonder if she was in on this, he thinks it likely.

“Go,” Clarke snaps, jerking her head towards the door. He can see how much it pains her, but she doesn’t let the pain lace her voice—she’s still as strong and steady as she was before the attack. When the door closes behind Kane and Abby, Clarke deflates and lets the healer look over her cauterized wounds. He grunts and deems them acceptable and then leaves without another word.

Then they’re left alone, covered in blood with more questions than answers. At some point, someone had brought in a bowl of water and clean cloths to clean Clarke’s wounds. As much as she probably needs a bath to get the blood off there is no way she is getting out of bed. So he takes the water and cloths and cleans her over until her skin’s stained pink and the water’s turned red.

She doesn’t say anything, she doesn’t need to. The cold, steely gaze says more than words ever could. He doesn’t say anything, either, just rips away the rest of her ruined tunic and covers her in a blanket. It’s dark out now, the moon slowly rising among a symphony of stars.

The night would be beautiful if not so tainted now.

“Peace,” she murmurs softly into the darkness. “How fickle and fragile it is.”

Sleep doesn’t come easy to either of them, but he didn’t expect it to. Instead, he holds on tight to Clarke, careful of her wounds and rage coursing through her veins. He can deal with the shouting and the screaming as he has done all of his life. It’s the quiet anger that scares him the most.

*

Even after several days, Kane appears to have failed to find the person who attacked them on the balcony. It comes as no surprise, he only wonders if the arrows were meant to kill Clarke, or simply take her out long enough for Kane to get his own way with the council.

Clarke’s still on bed rest, with strict instructions that if she ever wants full use of her shoulder, she’ll stick to keeping it immobile for the time being. She’s not happy about it—he can see her itching to get back to the council meetings. Even without the fake attack, there’s still a threat of Sparta attacking.

He still has an army to train though. He’s tougher on them now more than ever before. He cares now—he cares for the people of the land, he doesn’t want to see them suffer, he doesn’t want to see them imprisoned by Sparta or killed in war.

The soldiers know something’s happening, they can feel it in the air—the tension between him and Kane, the longer, tougher sessions, and it’s making them nervous. As it should. Even now, Sparta would take over their city within hours, all of the soldiers left for dead or made an example of. For the first time, there’s a crushing guilt that he didn’t train them properly in the first place.

His feet ache and sweat drips from every pore when he gets home that night, Clarkes sits miserably in bed watching him shrug off his armour.

She opens her mouth to speak, but she’s cut off by the door slamming open. In any other circumstances, Bellamy would think of how unusual it is for somebody not to knock, but instead, he’s filled with dread at what it might mean.

There’s a councilman that he vaguely recognises, though he couldn’t put a name to the face. He’s panting and panicking at the doorway, his eyes wide and alarmed when he says, “Tegea’s ambassador’s here, he demands an audience.”

Clarke’s out of bed before he can argue, though he tries.

“Clarke you’re still injured,” he warns. “You’re not supposed to be out of bed.”

“I don’t care,” she snaps but winces when she tries to walk unsteadily on her feet. “I have to go.”

While he agrees, he’s not happy about it. He holds her elbow for support and curses whatever gods led them to this.

The Tegea ambassador is an old, frail man with white wispy hair flowing down his shoulders. He stands in front of the throne anxiously wringing his hands out in front of him. When he sees Clarke storm in, he bows but Clarke waves him off with a flick of her hand and demands to know what’s going on.

He wants to know, too. He wants to know what is so urgent that they pulled Clarke from her bed when she’s still recovering from the attack—which still he’s convinced was orchestrated by her own General.

“I got the word from Messenia and I came as fast as I could your highness,” he blabbers. Bellamy doesn’t care who sent word or from where—he just wants to know what in Zeus’s name is going on. “Sparta’s warriors are marching upon us; they mean to spread the border and take the land. They have chains and swords—they sent a message for you.”

Bellamy’s blood runs cold and Clarke’s face falls in devastation. He never wanted this—his notes were supposed to deter Pike from sending an army, but here they are anyway, the woman he loves about to lead an army into war and he can do nothing to stop it. The Army’s not ready—they’re nowhere near a match for Sparta but now he’ll have to watch those soldiers he has grown fond of dying a brutal warrior's death.

When did he become like this—so weak and afraid of death? Never before has he been saddened by the thought of soldiers dying—it was the highest honour, to die in war and to serve your kingdom. Now he looks at Clarke and sees a home he never thought he would get, and he’s losing it all for a nation that considered him expendable.

“How long?” she whispers, her voice barely steady. Her life’s slipping through her fingers, her short reign about to be determined with blood and violence and betrayal.

“Maybe a day at most,” the ambassador tells her shakily. “Your highness, Tegea has no army—we’re a peaceful nation, we don’t want war.”

“You have our army,” Clarke assures him, then turns to Bellamy, “Gather the council, prepare the army,” Clarke declares with a gaze of steel. “We will not be made prisoners.”

She turns and storms from the room, he follows close behind. She shouldn’t be doing this injured, she’s not physically or mentally strong enough. She should be resting, but a leader's job is never done, he knows that as well as anybody.

Her battle plans are better than any he’s ever seen, he’s not afraid to admit that after spending countless hours pouring over Pike’s. What she lacks though is manpower. Her plans are good—excellent, but without a competent army, the land will be Sparta's before darkness falls. He knows that Clarke knows this too. He sees it in her face as she makes her last-minute plans.

But he knows that she won’t stand down, not from this—Arcadia will not fall easily.

Kane stands stonily over the table, staring hard at the plans. He’s not adding anything in and Bellamy suspects that this is what he wanted, for Clarke to fall so he could take the glory for the battle.

Bellamy would like to see him try.

Clarke’s being run ragged and he’s trying to get the army together while Clarke looks over the battle plans to get everything ready. He knows they’ll have to work through the night to get their army even close to ready.

The army isn’t anywhere near as big or as skilled as Sparta’s, but he’s truly done his best with what little resources and low starting point he had. He’s both shocked and not that Kane had ever let them get that bad. He doesn’t want to believe it, but as he’s in the arsenal getting swords and spears and shields ready he has doubts that they can win this battle. Even unskilled, there’s not enough warriors. 

Then, something surprising happened. People came forward in a mass, civilians with no training come forward to fight for their nation. He gets an overwhelming feeling that he can’t quite describe, but it fills him with warmth. These are people who truly love their nation, they’re not forced to fight like they are in Sparta, but they do it anyway. 

It definitely boosts their numbers, and all of a sudden, they look like an actual army. They’re not as well trained or as well disciplined as Sparta, but they’ve got passion and something to fight for. 

He’s tentatively optimistic when he gets back to his chambers well after nightfall. He’s only come back to get his armour, the faster he’s ready the faster he can get the rest of the army ready. 

He’s not expecting Clarke to be there though, he thought her council would be keeping her busy by now. 

He doesn’t expect his letters to Pike to be strewn over the bed, either. Clarke’s gripping one, staring down at it in utter disbelief, tears in her eyes. 

“Clarke, I can explain,” he tries, but he’s stopped in his tracks when she looks up, a tear rolls down her cheek and he wants nothing more than to wipe away, but he knows he can’t, it’s not the time. 

“These are my battle plans,” she whispers slowly, “they’re all about my army and the guards, where they’re stationed, what times they changeover, how many warriors we have—you’re sending it to Pike.”

He shakes his head, he wishes more than anything that he had the words to tell her that she’s wrong, that it’s not what it looks like, but it is. He’s changed some of the information, but he’s had to be careful that he doesn’t change too much, Pike would have got suspicious, and that would have been dire. 

“You’ve been betraying me the entire time.” Another tear runs down her cheek, and he hates himself in that moment. He never wanted to be the one to hurt her, he never wanted to make her cry. “This whole marriage, the peace treaty—it was a sham.”

He opens his mouth to defend himself, he wants to tell her that she’s wrong, but she’s not. This was always the end result, Sparta betraying her. War was always the ultimate goal for Sparta. There’s nothing he can do now but tell her the truth.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers. “I’m so, so sorry. Pike wanted me as an inside man, he wanted me to send back information so he could start a war. The peace treaty was never going to last.”

“I fell for it.” Clarke crumples the letter in her fists, his heart shattering with it. “How could I have been so stupid? I was so focused on Kane that I forgot about you. My council was right, I’m not fit to lead. I practically asked for an attack, I—”

“Clarke stop.” He takes the letter from her fist and throws it to the floor. He should have burned them when he had the chance, ripped them up—done something with them, anything but leave them where Clarke would find them. “You’re not stupid, this isn’t your fault. I didn’t want you to find out like this, it’s not how I wanted this to happen.”

She blinks up at him, the weight of his betrayal clear in her eyes. “Then how did you want it to happen? When Pike was storming the city? When they were cutting off my head to take my throne? Please,” she begs, “tell me when exactly you planned on telling you were a spy for Sparta and betraying me.”

What a mess he’s gotten himself into. He should have confessed when he first started having feelings for her, when the notes started feeling wrong and when his heart began to sink when he saw Murphy lingering in the shadows, waiting for him. The second he decided to change the notes to give the wrong information is when he should have just confessed. Instead, he’s started a war he has no intention of fighting, not for Pike anyway.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. It’s pathetic, how he’s let himself get like this. How he did the one thing he was warned against. There’s no other warrior out there who would have let themselves fall like this. Clarke is right, Sparta turns them into emotionless killing machines. The only thing they’re allowed to feel is anger for the enemy.

Arcadia is not the enemy though. He sees that now, he sees how his world was twisted under Pike’s rule—how every nation is the enemy, how they want to steal something from them, how they’re a threat. Before he came here, Arcadia was the threat, Clarke was a bloodthirsty, warmongering new Queen who was ready to take away Sparta’s freedoms.

He supposes this is not how Pike intended for his time here to go, for him to be radicalised towards a peaceful way of life. How did he ever survive on the constant brink of war? Constantly ready to say goodbye to his brothers, all for what? Land that doesn’t belong to them or a city that isn’t a threat. It is Pike who’s bloodthirsty—he can finally see that clearly.

“I don’t want to go to war,” he confesses. “At first, maybe I did. Pike told me that you were a threat to Sparta, that you wanted to take away freedoms and use them as your own. I know it’s not true now, I know you’re not the enemy. I never wanted it to get this far, please believe me, Clarke—I don’t want this.”

“Believe you?” she laughs humourless, tears still rolling down her cheeks. “There’s an army marching to Tegea’s border because of yours and Kane’s letters.” She turns from him and scoops a handful of the notes, throwing them at his chest. Though they hold no physical weight, it hurts more than a spear through his heart. “My people will die and Pike will take over the city and surrounding villages— _ that’s _ what you wanted, for Pike to take over. He won’t stop here, he’ll keep travelling north—he’ll take over all of Greece and you’ll be there playing the good little soldier.”

She’s right, even though he passes on false information at times, Kane’s been telling the truth, Bellamy’s confident of that. He doesn’t know what Pike’s offered him, but it must be good to let your own people march into a war they’re not prepared for.

“You know what the worst part is though?” Her voice cracks under the strain of the emotion. He’s done that to her, broken her when she’s on the brink of war. “The worst part is I loved you, despite everything, despite telling myself I was never going to marry for love—I fell in love with you anyway, and now look.”

If there was ever a bad time for a confession of love, it’s now. But she’s more than likely about to execute him for treason, so he has nothing to lose when he tells her, “I love you, I really do. I don’t want this war, and I don’t want to lose you, or any of this—the city, the people, I fell in love with all of it. I know this is my fault, I should have called it off a long time ago but it doesn’t change that I love you. You’re my home, Clarke. Arcadia’s my home and I’ll fight for it, I’ll fight for you.”

Her face turns to stone, glaring at him with all of her might. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare try and tell me that you love me, or my people or the city when you’ve started a war. I left you in charge of my army, I put so much trust in you to try and prove I was making the peace treaty work and you  _ used me. _ ”

“I’m sorry,” he whispers again because there’s nothing left to say now. He has no justification, no way he can convince her that she’s wrong, that he’s willing to stand up and fight with her. If he were in her shoes, he wouldn’t believe him either.

“Go,” she grits, still glaring at him, “before I changed my mind and have you arrested for treason. Go fight your war, go kill the men you’ve spent months training. You can send one last message to Pike—tell him I’m not going down without a fight, tell him we’ll be at the border, tell him he’ll have to cut off my head before he takes over the city because that’s the only way he’s getting my throne.”

Bellamy’s rooted to the spot. He wants to tell her no, that he’s not going anywhere, that he's staying and fighting. But he knows how ruthless she can be, he knows that she’s not bluffing when she says she’ll have him arrested. She’ll cut off his head as an example and there’s nothing he can do about it.

“Go!” she shouts, the words bouncing harshly off the walls that he once thought were cold and lifeless, but slowly over time they were filled with a love he never thought he’d find here. “Please,” she utters, softer now—broken, and full of devastation. “Just go.”

So he does. He runs for his life with only one plan in mind. He steals a horse, there’s already a bounty on his head if he ever comes back, what is theft compared to treason? He knows the back routes out of here, he can avoid the army waiting at the border of Tegea. He knows Pike won’t be there yet, he waits until the final moments before the battle starts, never one to put in the footwork.

But first, there’s someone he needs to talk to. He makes it into Sparta relatively unnoticed, if anyone did notice him then they’ll just think he is running from Arcadia before to war. They wouldn’t be wrong.

His mother’s home looks exactly the same as he remembers, only it seems smaller now. He was spoiled in Arcadia, he got much more than he deserved there. 

“Bellamy,” his mother gasps, throwing her arms around his neck and hugging him tightly. He’s missed this, more than he had realised. For just a moment, he lets himself be in the arms of his mother. “What’s happening, why are you here?”

Reality soon crashes back, and all the shame it brings with it. “I never should have gone there,” he whispers. “It was a mistake, all of it.”

“What happened?” She pulls back and searches his face for answers. What a bad Spartan warrior he is, heartbroken because of a war.

“The war’s not what Pike’s making it out to be—there’s no threat from Arcadia, there was never a threat. Pike just wants to take the land.”

His mother shakes her head in disbelief. “What did she do to you?”

Clarke, he realises with a jolt—she thinks Clarke did something, brainwashed him into believing Sparta is the enemy. He didn’t need brainwashing; he can see it clear as day. 

As a child, his mother would tell him that you didn’t choose your destiny—destiny chooses you. She told him, dead serious on the darkest of nights after his father had died in battle, that destiny was a great thing, and life had a funny way of taking you to where you needed to be. He didn’t understand it at the time, but he does now. This is his destiny—to be on the right side of the history books, not the side that attacks for land, not the side of tyranny.

“Clarke didn’t do anything. I love her, mom. I know I shouldn’t, I know the marriage wasn’t–” He can’t finish the thought, because the marriage was real, to him at least. He loves her like a husband is supposed to love a wife.

“Bellamy,” she sighs, touching his cheek, “what have you gotten yourself into?”

“I have to talk to Pike; I have to stop this.”

“No,” she snaps, much more ferociously than he can ever remember her being. “Bellamy what do you think that’s going to achieve? He’s not going to stop this just because you ask him. He consulted the Oracle, they told him he’ll take Tegea. You won’t stop him, he’ll kill you if you try.”

“I have to try,” he whispers and kisses her forehead. Her face drops in realisation that she’s not going to stop him—he’s doing this no matter what she says. “I love you. Tell O as well, please.”

He turns then, away from her for what could be the last time. Either Pike will kill him or Clarke will, either way, he’ll be killed for love, and what better way to die is there?

Pike’s in his chambers, dressed in battle armour and ready to attack. Bellamy wonders if the Oracle’s predictions have sent him mad with power yet or if they haven’t, he’s not far off. He looks up and blinks in surprise when Bellamy storms in, the guards barely give him a second glance.

“Bellamy, what are you doing here?”

“You’re making a mistake,” Bellamy warns him. There’s doubt clear in his mind when he sees the glimmer in Pikes eyes, bloodthirsty and ready for Clarke’s throne.

“Imagine the life we’d have,” Pike grins, “With Arcadia’s lands—they’re richer than ours, bear a better harvest. Their city’s rich and it’s going to be ours.”

“Arcadia’s ready for a battle, they’re not going down without a fight.” Bellamy knows it’s useless to try and reason with him. When he’s completely sane it’s difficult enough, but the oracle’s given him that last push he needed.

“You think that  _ princess _ is going to beat us? Her army’s weak and undisciplined, she doesn’t know how to lead. I consulted the Oracle, they said we’ll win this—all I had to do was get rid of the king. Kane knew the people would want Clarke in power once we got rid of Jake.”

Bellamy’s stomach turns, Kane had killed the king, Clarke being in power had been one big elaborate scheme to get the throne and the land. Her entire rule was designed for her and Arcadia to fall. He’d left her there with Kane, knowing he is a traitor. She knows it too, but that won’t stop him from trying to kill her—if anything it’s more ammunition for him.

What must Pike have offered Kane for him to betray Arcadia like this? He doesn’t want to know, it could be all the riches they could wish to possess and it still wouldn’t excuse it.

“What did the Oracle tell you?” Bellamy demands. It doesn’t faze Pike, nothing will while he’s getting ready for battle.

Pike grins madly at him, “They told me we’d take Tegea to dance in with stamping feet and her fair plain to measure out the line.”

_ The line _ , they’re taking over the border, but Bellamy doesn’t think that’s the case. The oracles were rarely wrong, but Pike  _ can _ misinterpret it. Pike truly believes that the oracle means that they would take Tegea, but they won’t. They’ll storm it to take the land, but the oracle never said they would win—they said they’d take it with stamping feet, not win the land.

“We need the land,” Pike declares suddenly. “The revolts left us weaker than we should be. If we can take the land, we can strengthen the army. Tegea doesn’t have an army, they stand no chance. We have the fetters ready to take them prisoner. We’ll take their land and keep going until we take Arcadia.”

Pike doesn’t know that Arcadia sent their army to Tegea. He thinks they’ll truly just stamp out the border and create a new one, that they’ll use their fetters to chain up Tegea’s people and take them as slaves.

Their army’s weak enough from the revolts that a surprise attack just might take them down.

“Very good.” Bellamy smiles, and Pike’s eyes light up. “I’ll go see to the rest of the army, make sure everything’s in order.”

He turns and walks away. Pike will only hear what he wants to, the more Bellamy argues the more time he’s wasting. If they can still keep the attack a surprise, Clarke may have a chance.

“Bellamy,” Pike calls, making him wince. He turns slowly, waiting for any sign of suspicion. “Does your wife know about you?”

“Not a thing,” Bellamy lies with a tight smile. “She’s too preoccupied with trying to find out who the traitor is within her council to suspect me.”

“Good, she’d cut off your head without a second thought, remember that. She’s a killer, ready for war at any moment—we have to take her down.”

“Is that alright with you?” Bellamy questions. “That you sent me to who you believe is a killer that would cut off my head without a second thought?”

“Of course.” Pike frowns. “There are many men that can be my General—you’re dying for the cause, you should be proud.”

He’s not proud. He was on the wrong side of the war for much too long. People are expendable for Pike, his own life is expendable as long as he got his war and his land. He storms from the room and back to where he left his horse, Pike would be leaving soon, the battle would start soon enough, and he has to be on the right side. He has to be on Clarke’s side, winning or losing he’s going down with her.

He goes as fast as the horse will take him, but he knows he’s already wasted too much time travelling. If they haven’t already started the battle they’ll at least be on their way. People are making their way to the main square by the time he gets back. No one gives him a second glance, which can only mean Clarke hasn’t put a bounty on his head—not yet at least.

That doesn’t mean she won’t though, and as much as he deserves it, he doesn’t have time for that—there’s a war to win.

But Clarke’s nowhere to be found. The Army’s in place in the square, ready to march at any moment. He grabs a hold of Jaspers arm,  _ he’s just a kid _ , Bellamy thinks with a jolt. He shouldn’t be throwing his life away like this.

“Bellamy,” Jasper frowns in surprise, “where have you been? Clarke’s changed all the battle plans at the last minute and you and Kane were nowhere to be seen, what’s going on?”

“Kane’s a traitor,” Bellamy tells him bluntly. Jasper’s jaw drops, but they don’t have time for dramatics. “I don’t have time to explain. I need to find Clarke, do you know where she is?”

“She’s getting ready, she’s leading the army into the battle. She said she’s giving a speech before we go, any moment now.”

Bellamy looks up, there’s movement in her chambers, she’ll be out anytime now and they’ll be heading into battle. 

He takes a deep breath and sinks into the shadows, he’s here whether she wants him to be or not. He’ll die by her side or at her hand, either way, he’ll be with her.

_ * _

Sometimes her bones ache and her muscles weep under the weight of the decisions she has to make, the sacrifice of lives she’s forced to throw away in a pointless war. She foolishly craved peace, thrived for a better life and truly believed that her enemies wanted that too.

Now, Clarke supposes war is inevitable. As much as she would have liked to believe she could bring peace to the land, she was a fool to believe she would be accepted with no qualms or quarrels. 

She was more of a fool to believe Sparta would be the one to initiate a peace treaty and stick to it. Not only did she open herself up to a betrayal, but she also put her people in danger, and that was unforgivable. Despite her own heartbreak and embarrassment, she needs to be strong for her people. There’s plenty of time to mourn when the war is won. 

Now, she has an army weak from her father's reign and Kane’s betrayal—not training them like he should have. She dreads to think what Bellamy was doing there. She was young and naive, she believed she could change the world when really she was being laughed at. The great Arcadian ruler, fooled into destroying her city before she’d even taken the throne. 

Oh, how history will laugh at her, how she’ll be mocked and taunted. She’ll be the greatest example of how not to rule. She didn’t listen to her instincts and now she’s walked into a trap.

That was the wrath of love—it builds you up and holds you close, pulls you into a false sense of security then cruelly takes it all away, leaves you bare and broken and your world shattered.

“The army’s awaiting orders, your majesty.” She didn’t hear Kane come into her chambers, but he’s standing behind her now. She can’t bear to look at him, she doesn’t even want to acknowledge what he’s just said, but she has to. No matter how heartbroken or crestfallen she may feel, she’s still Queen and there’s still a job to do and a war to win. 

“Is our army even ready to fight a battle?” she asks quietly, she hasn’t checked in on them nearly as much as she should have, she trusted Kane and Bellamy to do their jobs.

“They’re willing and eager to fight.”

“I suppose that’s something. Tell me, how long have you known Sparta’s army was planning an attack?” She still can’t look at him, just grips the balcony tightly.

“I didn’t know, of course, I didn’t. I would have warned you, got the-”

Clarke raises her fist to stop him, she can’t bear to listen to the lies. “I’ve refrained myself from killing one traitor today, a traitor you forced me to marry. This time I won’t be as generous. I have my sources, Kane. I know that my marriage to Bellamy was an infiltration. I know you sent whoever to shoot me, I know you poisoned the wine. Please, just tell me the truth for once.”

There’s a heavy pause, Clarke wonders if he’s left the room without her noticing, but finally, he speaks up. “You’re too young to be taking on this kind of rule. I understand it was nice to keep Jake’s dynasty but you have no life experience, you’ve led a privileged life and have unrealistic ideals about the world. How easily you left yourself open to betrayal, Clarke. Don’t you see that? Since the moment you put on that crown you’ve been leading Arcadia to ruin. You needed to be knocked down, you needed to see how your failures would bring the city down. This was your doing, not mine.”

She turns in anger, ignoring the searing pain running through her shoulder. “And your solution was to what? Accelerate that? To force me into a traitorous marriage and join forces with the enemy? It wasn’t I who brought destruction to Arcadia, it was you, but I’ll take the fall for it. I will be the one who takes the blame and it’s my people who will pay the price for your treachery.” 

He stares her down coldly, not wavering from her glare. This was his plan all along, perhaps he’s been in collusion with Sparta this whole time—to let Sparta take over and for Arcadia to fall. 

What promises must Pike have made to get him on their side? Kane was already the General here, he already had control over the army. He practically has complete control over the battle plans and her council listen to him more than her, so what could he possibly gain from Sparta taking over them?

“Guards!” she shouts, not breaking eye contact. Kane's eyes narrow at her, surely he must know what's about to come. The guards burst in, looking between the two. “Take the traitor away, lock him up until the war's over. I’ll decide what to do with him later.”

Kane sneers at her as the guards grab his arms, ready to pull him away. “There is no later. You’re not ready for a war, Arcadia will fall and you’re to blame.”

Clarke turns away. She won’t argue with him, she won’t give him the satisfaction. He doesn’t fight the guards, not from what she can hear. She doesn’t care if he fights or not. She doesn't care what he does as long as he’s out of sight. 

There’s still an army to prepare though, and she’s just arrested her General. She got them into this mess, she’s going to get them out. She tells the guards to get the army in place—if they’re going down, Clarke’s going down with them.

It doesn't take long for the army to get in place. From her balcony, she can see them lined in perfect rows, showing more discipline than she thought they were capable of. Standing with their swords and spears and shields, ready to fight—ready to die. They’re waiting on her, for orders, for inspiration—for something. They’re waiting for her to give them something to fight for. 

Their army isn’t Sparta, she knows that as well as anybody. They’re not trained from birth to be warriors, they’re not brainwashed to go into war at any given second for any given reason. Clarke wanted peace, and she’s still fighting for that. 

What does she tell them? How does she tell them to go fight for a Queen that let them down? If she were in their position, she wouldn’t fight for her—they shouldn’t put their lives on the line for her. 

“Sparta wants to take away our freedom!” Clarke shouts, loud enough that the civilians lining the streets clutching their children can hear. “They want to take our land and chain us, turn us into slaves and give our homes to their warriors.”

She could hear a pin drop, the soldiers are that silent, looking up to her with more trust than she deserves. She won’t let them down, not again.

“They bring chains to enslave us and sticks draw their boundary lines. We won’t let them—not today, not tonight. This is our land, we won’t let Sparta take it as Kleros, we won’t back down from them. We have something worth fighting for here. We have our freedom, we have the lives we make for ourselves, ones that aren’t dictated by war or politics, but by love.”

He catches her eye then, huddled in a corner in the streets below. A hood pulled over his face but Clarke would recognise him anywhere. Bellamy’s looking up to her, eyes bright and brilliant, maybe he’s here to find out last minute battle plans, or maybe—just maybe—he was telling the truth when he said Arcadia was his home now, that he’d do anything for it. 

She won’t let herself believe that, it won’t help her now, believing pretty little lies whispered into her ear. If she’s going to die tonight, she’ll die with whatever small dignity she has left. 

“We have been betrayed, our battle plans and secrets leaked to Sparta. My own General planned attacks to weaken us. I can only apologise, but know this—no matter what happens, Arcadia is ours, and we will fight until our dying breath. I’m here, I’m marching into battle with you and if we fall, I fall too. 

“But we will not be defeated. We are strong, we have passion—more than what Sparta has. Do not fight for me, fight for your families, fight for your freedom. For Arcadia!”

A chorus of  _ For Arcadia  _ follows, a sound that brings tears to her eyes and almost brings her to her knees. She turns, and with a squeeze of her servant's hand for what could be the last time, she makes her way to lead her army into a war she never wanted to fight. 

Her mother’s waiting for her by the bottom of the steps, looking over her in disdain. “You won’t win this war,” she warns with a cutting glare. “You’re leading your people to their deaths. Look at you, you think you’re capable of winning a war against Sparta, I don’t know whether you’re deluded or stupid.”

She won’t rise to it, whatever coup she and Marcus were planning has failed, and it only adds to the hurt of the betrayal. Another one to add to the history books. 

“Guards,” Clarke calls. She could stand here and argue, try and convince her mother that she’s on the wrong side, but there’s an army marching towards them this very second. She won’t be the failure she’s being set up to be. “Take my mother away. Lock her up until the war is finished, I’ll decide what to do with her then.”

“You’re making a mistake,” her mother spits at her, cruel and unjust, Clarke doesn’t know what she ever did to deserve this, but it must have been awful. “You’re killing people.”

“No,” Clarke argues softly, “you’re killing them.”

She doesn’t wait while they take her away, whether they ever see each other again is an unknown entity, but this isn’t her battle, not right now. She’s about to lead her people into a war that her ignorance and naivety caused. 

The army’s waiting for her, swords sharpened and bows on shoulders. Maybe this is enough to beat Sparta, maybe Clarke can keep her optimism to be beaten with her head held high. Even if Arcadia wins the war now, there’s going to be a coup. She’ll be overthrown and have her head cut off.

So be it.

There’s no General to lead, no one else who knows the battle plans quite like her. It’s up to her to lead now—not Kane, not Bellamy, just her. She takes the sword that’s usually saved for the General going into battle, it’s heavier than the one she’s trained with, but the balance is good, and the blade is sharp—it will do its job.

She leads the way to Tegea with a heavy heart, the sun high and beating down mercilessly as she marches her people to what is sure to be their deaths. It’s going to be hers at least, but all leaders' deaths have stories, very few die a peaceful death in old age—her father didn’t, and neither will she. Soon enough she’ll join Hades and reign once more. 

Tegea’s in sight, the sun bounces off the chains Sparta means to enslave them with. 

Not without a fight, they won’t.

She can see Pike in the same position as her, leading his army to their death. Sparta is over confident in their ability though. They underestimate them, think they’ll sit back and watch their land be taken. 

Bellamy’s next to her suddenly, standing tall and staring straight ahead.

“You’re on the wrong side of the battle,” she tells him in warning. She doesn’t want him here, she doesn’t need him here. What’s his goal here—to sabotage their plans, or fight against his brothers?

“I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.” He matches her pace, falling perfectly into step with her. “I know the plans, I know where your weaknesses are—I can help, Clarke.”

“That is the exact reason you shouldn’t be here. You know too much, you had too much freedom and now you’re a liability. Are you going to fight against your home? Against the people you grew up with?” she spits in anger, not slowing her pace, but letting her anger carry her.

“You’re my home. You’re my people. Sparta saw me as expendable, they saw me as no great loss if you were to catch me and cut off my head.”

“I did catch you. If I knew you were going to hang around I’d have executed you instead of banishing you.”

Sparta’s army’s perfectly aligned, not a soldier out of place or undertrained. They don’t have an army that’s been thrown together.

But they’re not fighting with passion—they’re fighting to conquer, not to protect. That will be their downfall, fighting for the sake of a war.

“But you didn’t,” Bellamy tells her vehemently. She can feel his eyes boring into hers, she knows if she looks at him it’s going to be over for her. She regrets so much about that deal with Sparta, she regrets thinking she could have a loveless marriage like her parents. She’s not cold like her mother—she feels, that’s her Achilles Heel. “So if you want me to leave, strike me through here and kill me now, because that’s the only way you’re going to get rid of me.”

She’s not going to kill him, she knows that he knows that. Somewhere deep down, in a place she resents, she knows she trusts him. She shouldn’t, not after everything that’s happened, but she does anyway.

That’s her downfall.

They’re close to the border now, Tegea’s ambassador was right—they have sticks to reclaim the border, and chains to claim her people as their own. Arcadia won’t go down without a fight though.

Pike’s smile makes her stomach turn. There’s nothing pleasant or inviting about it, he makes her stomach turn. But still, she stands tall in the face of her enemies, of those who would happily watch her fall.

She draws her sword as her army races forward, starting the attack. She has one goal—get to Pike.

The battle cry sends a chill down her spine as time seems to slow. Warriors from both sides collide as the bloodshed begins.

Bellamy’s fighting by her side, fearless and loyal in a way that she never asked of him. 

The sword’s heavy in her hand and blood lands hot on her skin. She takes no joy in taking life like this—it’s what she was trying to avoid. That’s not how her enemies perceive her though. She knows that as well as anybody. They’ll make her out to be bloodthirsty, a warmonger who craves violence. 

No, history will not be kind to her. 

She ducks a sword, sharp that’s aimed for her throat. Her counter-attack is fatal, another Spartan warrior down, a chain wrapped around his hand—perhaps that was for her, to wrap around her and hold her prisoner. She pulls it from him, wrapping it around her own hand in statement. 

Blood splatters on her back, she turns quickly to see the light dying from a Spartan warrior's eyes as he crumples to the ground and Bellamy pulls the sword from his back. They were going to kill her while her back was turned. There’s a brief flicker of devastation on Bellamy’s face, but he masks it well.

She never asked him to kill for her. She certainly wouldn’t ask him to kill his people for her.

But he does, whether from love, guilt or deception she doesn’t know, but he’s done it— _ is _ doing it. She nods her thanks and smiles tightly. Perhaps after all of this is done, they’ll talk it through. If both of them are still alive and free, and the anger has withered away, they’ll talk this mess through.

Pike’s still in her sights, but she dares to say she’s losing this war. Her soldiers are not skilled enough to match up to Sparta. Her only hope is to kill Pike now, and Bellamy seems to be on the same page as her.

“I’ll cover you,” he assures her. There’s a look in his eyes that tells her he’s telling the truth, right now she has no choice but to trust him. If he stabs her in the back then she’s no closer to winning the war anyway. “I won’t let anything happen to you, I promise.”

She makes her way towards Pike, in an ideal world or war, it would be a clear path and she could have her final battle. But this is neither, and her path is filled with death and destruction, with blood and violence. Should she live long enough to ever sleep again, their faces will haunt her nightmares.

She takes a particularly nasty blow to her side, a sword slices through the weak spot in her armour. Clarke finds the weak spot in their throat.

Pike’s just feet away from her now, a few steps and he’ll be within her grasp. The sword practically hums in her hand from anticipation. She’s just moments away from either defeat or victory. 

But the sound of swords colliding is much too close. She looks behind her to see Bellamy struggling, a bigger man than him beating him down, hissing  _ traitor _ between the clashes of swords. Bellamy’s strong, she knows he is, but is he strong enough to beat someone twice his size? It doesn’t look likely. While Bellamy may be more skilled, brute strength goes a long way in battle too. 

If she stops now she’ll lose Pike, but if she doesn’t, Bellamy will be done for—he’ll die protecting her and she can’t let that happen. Despite everything, she can’t let him die. She clenches her fist around the chain and pulls it back, then with a flick of her wrist, she whips it forward and it wraps around the warrior’s neck. She pulls it back with all the strength she can find, the chain tightening around his throat as he falls to the floor with a strangled gasp, his face turning from a bright red to purple until finally, there’s no more air left in his lungs and he dies with a pitiful whimper on a hot, dry land that doesn’t belong to him.

There is no honour in a death like that. He was fighting for a land that did not belong to him, in a war that he had no concern fighting in. He died alone, violently and sadly, a true warrior's death.

Bellamy’s staring at her, bloody and out of the breath. He nods his thanks and Clarke wants to tell him that she didn’t do it for him, but then—who did she do it for? Herself?

She’s lost Pike in the battle now, her opportunity slipped away, but no matter, there will be other opportunities. 

“Clarke.” Bellamy grasps her arm, turning her back towards Arcadia and tugging on her arm. She tries to protest, to pull her arm away. The battle’s here—she doesn’t want to go back there, not until she has the victory she came for. “He went this way,” Bellamy hisses, and Clarke stops fighting then. She’s still not sure if she should trust him, but not trusting him seems like a worse idea right now.

She follows closely, trying her hardest to avoid the death that seems to be following her. Pike’s trying to get into the city—she’s got it well guarded, but Pike’s not backing down. 

If he wants to take her land, he’ll have to kill her. He’s in her grasp now, her fist clenches around the sword, ready for one final battle. 

“Go,” Bellamy tells her gruffly, “I’ve got your back.”

She believes him, maybe it’s stupid, but what’s new there? With a nod and an almost smile, she takes a deep breath and conjures all the courage she has in her, praying to the gods that she has enough strength to get her through this. 

“Clarke-” She turns back to him one last time, his soul shines brightly as he tells hers. “I meant what I said, all of it. I didn’t want to betray you, not in the end. I’m on your side, I love you. Go kill Pike.”

A battleground is no place for a declaration of love, but he did it anyway. Despite everything, despite the hurt of the betrayal and the pain of her broken heart, she tells him, “I love you too.” Then turns her back and heads to Pike. There’s so much more she has to say to him, but if these are her last words, let them be good ones—let them not be full of anger, but of love.

Pike sneers when she gets to him. Her guards have done their job, they’ve made a wall around the city limits that he can’t get into, try as he might. 

“You’re awfully brave,” he smirks. He’s bloody too, but she’s almost certain it’s the blood of her people, not his own. “Coming to war like this with no General and an army that can barely swing a sword.”

“Not brave.” Clarke stands tall, her head held high—she won’t back down, not to him. “We fight with honour we die with honour We’re not the invaders here, it’s your people who die a dishonourable death. All for what? For a bit of land?”

“Your city’s weak, Clarke. Your people are not loyal and your legacy is close to crumbling. We’re doing you a favour—your council was about to turn on you anyway and now you’ve brought a war.”

She wonders how much Kane told him—more than he told her. He knows her battle plans, that’s a fact, and he knew Tegea was weak. She’s not weak, though. She’s not the incapable fool Kane makes her out to be, and she’s not as naive to war as her enemies would believe. 

“Let’s settle this, then. If I fall, there’s no one to lead the army. Like you said, I have no General, no second. My husband is a traitor and so is my council. But if I win, who’s your General? The man who I killed with his brother's chain? Who leads your army when you’ve gone?” Her words get some reaction from him, perhaps not enough to be all too satisfying, but it’s enough. 

“We won’t get the chance to find out,” Pike jeers, drawing his sword. This is it now, this is where her reign comes to an end—on the sharp edge of a Spartan sword. Not without a fight though. 

Raising her sword, she positions it across her body, defending the attack. Pike’s a good fighter, but she knew he would be. She works on mostly defending herself, trying to find a pattern to his attacks.

Her arms ache and he’s caught her out a few times, but she’s getting it. She lets herself work on newfound muscle memory, blocking attacks while trying to keep a clear enough mind to look for weak spots. 

Everything else around her disappears—the rest of the battle, the guards, Bellamy, her mother locked up somewhere with her traitorous lover. The only thing that matters in this moment is the brief opening Pike leaves between attacks. She’s watched it enough times now, a blow towards her, sword pulls back, reposition—there’s her opening—and back into an attack.

“Give it up, you’re highness,” Pike hisses, his sword heavy against hers. “Even if you win, what do you gain? Your stupid mistakes and misguidance have cost you your throne—your own mother wants your demise, what could you possibly have left to fight for?”

She pushes his sword away and stumbles backwards—if she’s going to attack, she’s going to have to do it pretty soon. There’s a shockwave of pain in her side, she’s still bleeding from where she was hit earlier. If she’s going to make it out of this alive, it has to be now. 

His sword swings towards her—block.

“That’s the thing about being a leader, you put your people's lives before your own,” she grits out, her arms shaking under the pressure of keeping Pikes sword from her, but she manages to push it away.

“I can die, I can be dethroned—they can cut off my head for all I care, but I will not leave them in danger, even if it costs my life.”

Pikes attacks are strong and brutal, but he’s an arrogant fighter. He’s depending on her defending, not attacking—he’s getting too confident, too arrogant in their fight. She takes the brief window of opportunity to dart forward—there’s no weak spot in his armour, he’s not stupid enough for that.

But his neck is wide open, and her sword is sharp and cuts deep when it slices his throat. 

Pikes blood is hot and sticky on her face, down her neck and chest, covering her armour and arms. The blood of her enemy is still the blood of a life wasted.

“I have freedom left to fight for,” she tells his corpse quietly. The battle is quiet behind her, the last remaining warriors watching in horror or awe.

“Sparta’s king is dead,” she announces loudly. “The battle is done. The war is won. Arcadia we take Sparta’s chains—we will not be held as slaves, they will not take our land. Arcadia is ours.”

They win the war with a victory cry, Sparta’s chains used against them and marched back to the city. Bellamy doesn’t leave her side, he doesn’t say a word, but neither does she. 

She refuses to see the healer until all of her people have been seen. Instead, she sits on her balcony and watches the celebrations, the lovers’ reunions and the anguished cries when a loved one doesn’t appear.

That’s the sound that will stick with her, the lost lives of a war that could have been avoided.

Bellamy sits next to her quietly, looking slightly worse for wear, but he’s alive—they both are.

“What now?” she asks quietly. When Bellamy looks on the city, does he see what she sees? “I have prisons full of traitors and enemies, I have a council that would rather see us go to war than have me rule. My own mother’s down there too.”

Bellamy takes her hand and squeezes, his knuckles are dirty and bloody—they both need to wash and clean their wounds. They need to sit down and talk everything out. But for now, her day’s over and the sun's setting, her problems can wait until it rises again. Until then, she’s happy to sit here and imagine that her time ruling went differently.

*

In the morning with a clearer head and her wounds patched up, she waits for the uprising that is sure to come, but it doesn’t. The day brings new celebrations and a fresh sorrow—yesterday's battle still fresh, and it would be for a while. Now it is time to heal as a nation. 

Bellamy’s awake next to her, looking over at her with a crease in his brow and a frown on his lips. “Is today the day you cut off my head?”

She lets herself smile tightly. “No, I don’t think I will.”

“Good, I’d hate for my head to be a part of the new decor.”

She half laughs, but the thought’s sobering. Someone needs to pay for the betrayal, someone needs to take responsibility. “Kane was passing on information to Pike, wasn’t he?”

Bellamy nods sadly, “I don’t know if Pike knew that I was giving him the wrong information, but I had my suspicions about Kane. I’m sorry, I never wanted any of this to happen.”

She knows, her instincts may be wrong about a lot of things, but deep down, she knows he loves her and she knows that he did the best he could under the worst of circumstances. In lieu of an answer, she leans forward and kisses the crease from between his eyebrows, then rolls over and sits at the edge of her bed. There’s a dull ache in her chest and a prominent one in her side, but none of that’s important. The faster she gets this over with, the better. 

Bellamy helps her dress instead of the servants—they have families they’ve been reunited with or are mourning. She’s perfectly capable of sorting herself out for the day.

The prison cells are cold and dank, deep underground with very few torches lighting the way. They’re not designed to be a pleasant place. The guards nod at her as she walks past, unsurprised by her presence. 

She tries her hardest not to make a habit of coming down here, it reeks of death and betrayal. As a child, before her fathers reign, the old king Thelonious left a traitor down here to rot. Eventually, he was nothing more than bones huddled in the corner. It gave her nightmares for years, but she sees it now, the message it sends. Will that be her? Will she leave a Spartan warrior here as a stark reminder of what happened yesterday? Perhaps. 

There are cells filled with Spartan warriors who spit at her when she passes. She’ll have to decide what to do with them soon enough, but they’re not her priority right now. 

Kane is in the far corner, in a cell as far away from her mother as possible so they can’t conspire against her. He doesn’t look up when she approaches, but she can tell from the disdainful curl of his lips that he knows she’s there. Water drips somewhere behind her, rats scurry around her feet and the smell is foul.

“Give me one good reason I shouldn’t cut off your head,” she tells him evenly. He looks up slowly and smiles humorlessly. In that moment, he reminds her of Pike—the way he looks over her makes her skin crawl and she knows that he’s thinking about what could have happened if she hadn’t put up so much of a fight.

“I suppose congratulations are in order. I don’t know how you did it, how you of all people killed Sparta’s king,” he snarls, eyes full of hate. 

Clarke doesn’t know what she did to deserve this, to be hated by these men so much. Her father didn’t have these problems—he was a fair and just ruler, just like she was always trying to be. 

“You’re just a child,” Kane spits, almost as if he’d read her mind. “I watched you grow up, take your first steps, say your first words, and then I was just expected to sit back and take orders from you? Let you destroy the city your father worked so hard to build?”

Clarke hadn’t done a thing to him—she never gave orders, she hasn’t changed laws past trying to get their army into shape. If anything, she let Kane and the council call the shots, she gave her council more say than they deserved. 

“I didn’t destroy anything, you did. You sold me out to Sparta, you set up a spurious marriage and set up an attack on the very place you claim you were protecting. Please, just help me understand.”

Kane doesn’t answer, but she supposes he’s already accepted his fate. 

“Do you have anything to say? Any defence whatsoever? Please, just try and help me understand,” she pleads, but no answer can be found. The gods were not kind to her, and in return, she will not be kind to her traitors. 

“Then you’ll be executed at dawn.” Clarke turns on her heels, no longer able to look at him. This is not the kind of ruler she had hoped to be, but it’s the one she’s been forced to become. 

“And your traitorous husband, what happens to him?”

Clarke pauses. It hurts that he would ever put her in that position. He said it himself—he’d watched her grow up, take her first steps and say her first words, and yet he led attacks against her, sold her out to the enemy and waged a war against her. 

“My husband never claimed to be loyal,” is all she can respond, whether or not it’s the truth is a different matter completely. 

Her mother’s hunched over in a dark corner of her cell, facing away from her. What does she do with her own mother? She still hasn’t processed everything that happened. Although she didn’t see Kane’s betrayal coming until Murphy told her about it, she didn’t expect her own mother to turn against her.

When Clarke was a child, she fell ill. The healer who came to her was an old, stern and uninterested man who looked over her in her chambers and solemnly announced that he couldn’t find a reason for her illness, but he was sure she was going to die. She remembers that day, she remembers the illness. The cough that wracked through her tiny body, and the fever that made her delirious. There was talk of poison, but no traces of poison were ever found.

She had screamed and screamed for her father, but he wasn’t there. Her mother—cold and distant as she tended to be—told her to stop screaming. She told her that it wouldn’t solve anything and if she were to die, she would only bring death sooner than it had to be. Clarke had whimpered, cowered in a bed far too large for her and wept that she didn’t want to die. Her mother did something most confusing then, she climbed into bed with Clarke, wrapped her in her arms and told her stories. 

They were stories she had never heard before, stories of Goddesses in a world so dominated by men. She told her the stories of Gaia and Venus and Demeter, of Rhea and Psyche and Athena and more and more Goddesses—strong and powerful when Clarke was so used to hearing stories of men being the heroes.

Now, she has to wonder if her mother realises that she made Clarke this way, not power-hungry, not bloodthirsty, but strong-minded and powerful. She is changing the history books, a massive feat that she has to bear alone, with traitors and cynics pulling her down at any given moment—she was the one to defeat Sparta.

So why does it feel like she’s lost more than she’s achieved?

“Do you want the throne?” Clarke asks. It’s the only thing she can think to say, the only thing she can think of that would lead to this. 

It obviously surprises her mother, by the way she turns and glares at her.

“Of course I don’t want the throne,” she spits, “It’s a wretched thing, cursed.”

Clarke takes a moment to compose herself. Her only theory for why the last of her family would want her dead like this is gone. 

“Then why?” Clarke’s voice cracks against her will. She’s supposed to be strong, a leader who just took down their greatest enemy’s king. Instead, she’s standing in dank cells feeling like a child asking why her mother doesn’t love her anymore. 

Her mother blinks at her. Does she feel any sort of remorse, Clarke wonders. Does she care what she’s done to her?

“You held my hand while I was bleeding from an attack that you and Kane orchestrated. How could you do that? Why?”

“Because you had to be stopped. You were bringing us to ruin.”

“I was trying to bring peace. I’m not the villain you make me out to be. There’s this version of me that you’ve created that I don’t understand. I have never been the person you’ve made me out to be. Please, Mom—just tell me why.”

There’s a long pause, and Clarke doesn’t think she’s going to respond. But finally, her mother confesses with a sigh, “You were never supposed to take the throne. We didn’t think the people would favour you as much as they did. You had no experience, you’re a woman for crying out loud—women don’t rule, not in public, at least. We thought Kane was going to be crowned—Kane was the better choice.”

“Kane was never in the running,” Clarke tells her bluntly, “you know that. Just because you didn’t want me taking the throne does not mean Kane was ever up for it.”

“Once you had gone, Kane was going to take the throne.”

“So what? You were going to have me executed? Assassinated? You’d have your own daughter killed just to take the throne for your own agenda?”

Her mother doesn’t respond, doesn’t even look at her. Her silence is all the answer she needs. 

“Pike was going to take the throne,” Clarke snaps, her temper flaring. “Not Kane—Pike. This was going to become Sparta and Pike would have cut off anyone’s head who dares to get in his way—you and Kane included.”

It’s killing her. She wanted nothing but peace and she’s been forced to become a murderer. She never thought that her time as Queen would be easy, but she never thought it would be this hard either. She never thought she would be confronting her own mother in a dank jail cell about her assassination attempt.

“Now what do I do?” Clarke laughs humorlessly. She’s desperately fighting back tears—Zeus only knows she needs a good cry after the last few days. “Do I execute you with Kane? Banish you? Forgive you? If you were in my position, what would you do? If I had conspired against you, would you forgive me?”

“I don’t know,” her mother whispers, still not looking at her. “I wish none of this had ever happened.”

“I killed Pike. Slit his throat with Kane's sword and took his soldiers. Are you at least proud of me for that? That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? For me to be a murder, the savage leader you make me out to be. Have I finally made you proud?” Clarke spits, wanting some sort of recognition from her. “That’s what you made me—the villain you wanted me to become.”

No answer again. Clarke could very easily become that person right now, kill all of her traitors and kill all the traitors to come should they dare. But she won’t rule by fear, she won’t be that person.

“You’re banished.” Clarke’s voice is steady now—she won’t cry now, she won’t show her weakness. “Kane will be executed tomorrow. You can stay long enough to see that and then you’re gone.”

Her mother stands then, shakily stumbles towards the bars of her cell. “Where will I go?” she demands. But Clarke doesn’t care where she goes, as long as she’s out of her city. 

“Perhaps Sparta, since you were so determined for them to take the throne—you can go live in their broken kingdom under their rule.”

There’s a sound of protest from her mother, but she couldn’t care less. Her heart’s heavy as she steps back into the sun, but to her surprise, her people bow to her, take her hand and give her flowers. 

For all the feelings of failure, she forgot to step back and remember that she won the war. Sparta has fallen—for now at least—and with no wars impending, maybe they can finally be at peace. 

The stairs seem longer than usual and the pain running through her body only gets worse with every step, but Bellamy’s waiting for her on the balcony. She had wondered if she would ever be able to trust him again, but when she sees him looking out over the city with such love and admiration, she knows they’ll be alright. 

*

The city celebrates the next day. Her council’s thrown out and soon she’ll make a new one—one for the people—but for now, her traitors are dead or banished, and the city rejoices as they deserve. The chains Sparta carried to take them prisoner are hung in the temple of Athene Alea in Tegea, a pageant to Sparta’s defeat.

Murphy lingers in the shadows with a smirk, Clarke doesn’t expect anything less from him. 

Bellamy doesn’t leave her side though. He’s still as protective as he was before, but Clarke’s not complaining about that. She doubts that this will be their only hurdle, but if they can make it through that, they’ll make it through anything. 

Perhaps the wrath of love wasn’t so bad after all. 

**Author's Note:**

> This work was written for t100fic4blm. I'm taking requests for prompts along with lots of other amazing writer and content creators! You can also gift a fanwork to your friend for the holidays! For more information, [Check out the carrd here!](https://t100fic-for-blm.carrd.co)
> 
> Thank you so much to E and Miranda for all your help with this, it would be nowhere near the fic it is now without your help.
> 
> You can find me on [tumblr!](https://excuseyouclarke.tumblr.com/)


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